
Book_ 



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GopightN 



COPmiGKT DEPOSIT. 



J^ittle 
Journeys to ^Parnassus 

By Thomas Speed Mosby 



Laudator temporis acti 



SECOND EDITION 

Revised and Enlarged 



PUBLISHED BY 

The Hugh Stephens Press 
Jefferson City, Mo. 



1922 



P N «f «. 
• Mi 



In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time: the articulate audible 
voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether 
vanished like a dream. 

— Carlyle, "Heroes and Hero Worship." 

My days among the dead are passed; 

Around me I behold, 
Where'er these casual eyes are cast, 

The mighty minds of old; 
My never-failing friends are they 
With whom I converse day by day. 

— Southey, "Occasional Pieces." 



SEP 2172 



PREFACE 



The adoption of this work for use by the Teachers' 
Reading Circle of the State of Missouri has made necessary 
a second edition. The author has seized the opportunity 
thus afforded to enlarge and improve a number of the essays. 
It is believed that the usefulness of the volume to students, 
teachers and literary workers has been greatly increased. 

At the end of this volume the publishers have appended 
a number of excerpts from the opinions of literary critics, 
indicating the generous reception accorded the first edition. 

T. S. M. 
Jefferson City, Missouri, 
September 1, 1922. 



Copyright, 1922, T. S. Mosby. 



©GU683337 



CONTENTS 



Chapter. Part One— GREAT GREEK AUTHORS. Page 

I. Aeschylus 9 

II. Aristotle 11 

III. Euripides 14 

IV. Homer 17 

V. Plato 22 

VI. Plutarch 25 

VII. Menander 28 

VIII. Pindar 32 

IX. Anacreon 34 

X. Theocritus 38 

Part Two— GREAT ROMAN AUTHORS. 

I. Livy 43 

II. Horace 45 

III. Virgil 48 

IV. Lucan 51 

V. Ovid 53 

VI. Lucretius 56 

VII. Plautus 59 

VIII. Marcus Aurelius 61 

IX. Sallust 64 

X. Quintilian 67 

Part Three— GREAT ITALIAN AUTHORS. 

I. Dante 73 

II. Petrarch , 80 

III. Boccaccio 86 

IV. Tasso 88 

V. Ariosto 93 

VI. Boiardo 96 

VII. Michelangelo 99 

VIII. Machiavelli 103 

IX. Metastasio 107 

X. Alfieri 110 

Part Four— GREAT SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE AUTHORS. 

I. Lope de Vega 117 

II. Cervantes 122 

III. Camoens 128 

IV. Quevedo 131 

(5) 



Chapter. Page 

V. The Argensolas 134 

VI. Villegas 136 

VII. Montalvo 138 

VIII. Guillen de Castro 140 

IX. Vicente 143 

X. Calderon 146 

Part Five— GREAT FRENCH AUTHORS. 

I. Montaigne 151 

II. Rabelais 155 

III. Fenelon 159 

IV. Montesquieu 162 

V. Corneille 165 

VI. Racine 168 

VII. Moliere 171 

VIII. La Fontaine 175 

IX. Voltaire 177 

X. Hugo 181 

Part Six— GREAT GERMAN AUTHORS. 

I. Goethe 189 

II. Schiller 195 

III. Lessing 200 

IV. Kant 203 

V. Richter 207 

VI. Klopstock 210 

VII. Wieland . 213 

VIII. Herder 216 

IX. Heine 219 

X. Weber 223 

Part Seven— GREAT BRITISH AUTHORS. 

I. Shakespeare 231 

II. Spenser 237 

III. Milton 241 

IV. Addison 247 

V. Pope 251 

VI. Byron 256 

VII. Scott 262 

VIII. Wordsworth 266 

IX. Dickens 271 

X. Tennyson 278 

Index 289 

(6) 



PART ONE 

GREAT GREEK AUTHORS 



I. Aeschylus. 

II. Aristotle. 

III. Euripides. 

IV. Homer. 
V. Plato. 

VI. Plutarch. 

VII. Menander. 

VIII. Pindar. 

XI. Anacreon. 

X. Theocritus. 



(7) 



Land of the Muse! within thy bowers 

Her soul-entrancing echoes rung, 
While on their course the rapid hours 

Paused at the melody she sung — 
Till every grove and every hill. 

And every stream that flowed along 
From morn to night repeated still 

The winning harmony of song. 

— From "Greece," by James G. Brooks. 



(8) 



I. 

AESCHYLUS. 

Aeschylus, the ''father of Greek tragedy," was a native of 
Eleusis, in Attica, where he was born B. C. 525. When thirty- 
five years of age he took a distinguished part in the battle of 
Marathon. In a painting portraying this battle, the likeness of 
Aeschylus appears in the foregound, thus sharing the honors 
with Miltiades, the general commanding the Greek forces 
in that memorable conflict. Six years later, at the age of 
forty-one (in B. C. 484, the year in which Herodotus the 
historian was born), Aeschylus attained his first dramatic 
success by winning the prize for tragedy — a feat which he 
accomplished thirteen times in the following sixteen years. 

The literary style of Aeschylus, though turgid at times, 
is distinguished for its grandeur, fire and force. He has little 
of tenderness, but his theme is lofty, his thought is noble, 
his manner elevated, and his grasp is bold and strong. Finely 
expressive of his genius, and among the most beautiful creations 
of their kind, are the songs of the Furies in the "Eumenides," 
in "Agamemnon" the inspiration of Cassandra, and the ghost 
of Darius in "The Persians." 

Aeschylus was invited to Sicily by King Hiero, a distin- 
guished patron of the learned, who had induced Pindar and 
Simonides to reside at his court. One of his plays, "The 
Aetneans," was composed at the request of King Hiero. At 
another time he came from Athens to have his play, "The 
Persians," presented by invitation of the same King. 

In the course of forty years of active work in the drama 
Aeschylus is believed to have written ninety plays, of which 
the titles of only seventy-nine are known today. Only seven 
of his tragedies remain. The rest are lost. The seven 
tragedies extant are "The Suppliants," "The Persians," "The 
Seven Against Thebes," "Prometheus Bound," and the trilogy, 

(9) 



10 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

"Agamemnon," "Choephori," and "Eumenides." Of the 
latter work Prof. Clifford Herschel Moore, a distinguished 
critic, remarks: "This trilogy represents the maturest work 
of Aeschylus, and we may well doubt whether a greater was 
ever written." Mark Pattison declares it to be "the grandest 
work of creative genius in the whole range of literature." 

In its highest form, Aeschylus was undoubtedly the 
creator of the Greek drama. Not only did he introduce 
action to supersede the perpetual chorus, and dramatic 
dialogue in place of long narrations, but he was the first to 
introduce masks, costumes and scenic effects. He bodies 
forth the creations of his genius in language of sublimity and 
power, and his place is secure among the master spirits of the 
race. 

From the "Prometheus Bound" are taken the beautiful 
and familiar lines: 

"Ye waves 
That o'er the interminable ocean wreathe 
Your crisped smiles." 

And here is a pretty fragment (Plumptre's translation) : 
"So in the Libyan fable it is told 
That once an eagle stricken with a dart, 
Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft, 
'With our own feathers, not by other's hands, 
Are we now smitten.' " 

Hear, also, his tribute to justice: "But justice shines in 
smoky cottages, and honors the pious. Leaving with averted 
eyes the gorgeous glare of gold obtained by polluted hands, 
she is wont to draw nigh to holiness, not reverencing wealth 
when falsely stamped with praise, and assigning to each deed 
its righteous doom." 

And this, on tyranny, is as true today as when Aeschylus 
wrote it twenty-four hundred years ago: 



ARISTOTLE 11 

"For, somehow, there is this disease in tryanny, not to put 
confidence in friends." 

The conclusions of modern criticism are summarized by 
Lord Macaulay, with his customary precision and force, in 
the following quotation from his essay on John Milton: 

"Aeschylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet. * * * At 
this period, accordingly, it was natural that the literature of 
Greece should be tinctured with the Oriental style. And that 
style, we think, is clearly discernible in the works of Pindar 
and Aeschylus. The latter often reminds us of the Hebrew 
writers. The Book of Job, indeed, in conduct and diction, 
bears a considerable resemblance to some of his dramas. 
Considered as plays, his works are absurd; considered as 
choruses, they are above all praise. If, for instance, we ex- 
amine the address of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon on his 
return, or the description of the seven Argive Chiefs, by 
principles of dramatic writing, we shall instantly condemn 
them as monstrous. But if we forget the characters, and 
think only of the poetry, we shall admit that it has never been 
surpassed in energy and magnificence." 



II. 

ARISTOTLE. 



The most versatile intellect that mankind has ever known, 
the master mind of all antiquity and the great mental phenome- 
non in the history of human thought, that mighty prodigy of 
learning known to the world as Aristotle, still gleams adown the 
ages like a distant sun, a beacon-light of learning that casts its 
burning rays upon the farthest shores of time. Aristotle was 
born at Stagira, B. C. 384, eight years after the death of 
Socrates. He was one year older than his personal friend, 
King Philip of Macedon, and was three years older than 
Demosthenes. 



12 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

The son of a physician and naturalist of repute, deriving 
his descent through a long line of medical ancestors dating 
back to the immortal Aesculapius, born to wealth and position, 
and reared in an atmosphere of learning, the influence of 
heredity and environment were united to create in the brain 
of Aristotle the most colossal mind that ever found abode 
within the frame of man. At the age of seventeen he pro- 
ceeded to Athens, to become a pupil of Plato, with whom he 
remained for twenty years. 

When Alexander the Great was born, King Philip an- 
nounced the fact, to Aristotle in this letter: "Know that a 
son is born to us. We thank the gods for their gift, but 
especially for bestowing it at the time when Aristotle lives; 
assuring ourselves that, educated by you, he will be worthy 
of us, and worthy of inheriting our kingdom." In due time 
the philosopher accepted the trust, and thus became the 
mentor of one of the greatest characters of history, and the 
pupil was never wanting in proper respect for his distinguished 
tutor. Years later, when he had defeated Darius in battle 
and was in hot pursuit of the fleeing Persians, Alexander 
paused to write his old teacher: "Alexander, wishing all 
happiness to Aristotle. You have not done right in publish- 
ing your acroatic works. W 7 herein shall we be distinguished 
above others, if the learning, in which we were instructed, 
be communicated to the public? I would rather surpass 
other men in knowledge than in power." 

Aristotle at the age of fifty set up his school in Athens 
near the temple of the Lycian Apollo, whence we derive our 
word ' Lyceum," the name applied to his school. Aristotle 
and his followers were called "Peripatetics," from the peripa- 
ton, or walk, which adorned the temple. Here he wrote and 
taught, and lived the life he loved, until jealous-hearted 
rivals, exasperated at his vast superiority, as mediocrity is 
so often angered at the sight of excellence, caused false charges 
of "impiety" to be preferred against him. He would have 



ARISTOTLE 13 

met the fate of Socrates had he not saved himself by a timely 
flight to Chalcis where, in the sixty-third year of his age, he 
died of a broken heart. 

According to credible report, Aristotle was the author 
of four hundred books, but forty-six of which have survived 
to us. More than ten thousand commentators have sought 
to elucidate and illustrate his works. His influence has been 
enormous in every field of thought. He was the first to 
perfect a method of reasoning, and formal logic has made 
little improvement since his day. He raised to the status 
of independent disciplines the subjects of Logic, Grammar, 
Rhetoric, Literary Criticism, Politics, Psychology. He first 
discovered the law of the Association of Ideas. He collected 
158 constitutions of various states, and was the first to essay 
a scientific treatise on government. He was the first great 
master of literary criticism. He was, as Dr. Gillies says, 
"not only the best critic in poetry, but himself a poet of the 
first eminence. Few of his verses indeed have reached modern 
times; but the few which remain prove him worthy of the 
sounding lyre of Pindar." 

"Aristotle," as Hegel says, "penetrated into the whole 
universe of things, and subjected to the comprehension its 
scattered wealth ; and the greatest number of the philosophical 
sciences owe to him their separation and commencement." 

Education was his whole thought, the key-note of his 
life, the undying passion of his soul, and we may fittingly 
close this sketch with one of his sage admonitions upon the 
subject dearest to his heart: 

"It would therefore be best that the state should pay 
attention to education, and on right principles, and that it 
should have the power to enforce it; but if it be neglected as 
a public measure, then it would seem to be the duty of every 
individual to contribute to the virtue of his children and his 
friends, or at least to make this his deliberate purpose." 



14 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

III. 

EURIPIDES. 

Of the three great tragic poets of ancient Greece — 
Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides — the last named was 
the latest. While Sophocles is considered the most masterly 
of the three, Aeschylus was the first, and Euripides exceeded 
either in tenderness and in richness of moral sentiment. 
However, as Dr. Blair says, "Both Euripides and Sophocles 
have very high merit as tragic poets. They are elegant and 
beautiful in their style; just, for the most part, in their 
thoughts; they speak with the voice of nature; and, making 
allowance for the difference of ancient and modern ideas, 
in the midst of all their simplicity, they are touching and 
interesting." 

Euripides was born in Salamis while the great battle was 
in progress there between the Greeks and Persians. He 
grew up in Athens without any of the advantages of wealth, 
but was well educated. He was the pupil of Anaxagoras — 
that philosopher who said "philosophy has been my worldly 
ruin and my soul's prosperity" — and was a warm personal 
friend of Socrates. He was fifteen years younger than his 
great contemporary, Sophocles, who frequently praised his 
work with the utmost magnanimity. Aristophanes, the 
comic writer, was his bitter enemy, and attacked him with 
satire and ridicule in a manner so cutting and galling to his 
sensitive nature that this circumstance is offered as one of 
the reasons for his quitting Athens. Aristotle, however, has 
placed the seal of his own approval upon the literary excellence 
of Euripides, and this alone, if other proofs were wanting, 
would firmly fix his exalted position among the classics of 
ancient Greece. Plutarch tells us that after the disastrous 
defeat of the Athenians before Syracuse, the Sicilians spared 
those who could repeat any of the poetry of Euripides. 
"Some there were," says he, "who owed their preservation to 



EURIPIDES 15 

Euripides. Of all the Grecians, his was the muse with whom 
the Sicilians were most in love. It is said that upon this 
occasion a number of Athenians on their return home went 
to Euripides, and thanked him in the most grateful manner 
for their obligations to his pen." 

Unlike the greater number of the brilliant minds of that 
day, Euripides kept himself aloof from politics, and spent 
the greater part of his life in his library, immersed in the 
pursuits of literature. The king of Macedonia, Archelaus, a 
patron of letters, invited the poet to his court at Pella, and 
there he spent the remainder of his days. Upon his death, 
the highest honors were paid to his memory, by order of the 
king. Archelaus erected a monument to him, bearing the 
inscription: "Never, O Euripides, will thy memory be 
forgotten!" The Athenians were anxious to remove his 
remains to Athens, but their request was denied. They 
then erected to his memory at Athens a ceno'aph bearing 
this inscription: "All Greece is the monument of Euripides; 
Macedonian earth covers but his bones." Lycurgus, the 
orator, erected a statue to him in the theatre. Sophocles, 
still surviving, publicly lamented his death, and all Athens 
made tardy amends for the neglect of the great dramatist 
during his life. 

Tradition accredits Euripides with the authorship of 
ninety plays, but eighteen of which survive. He has found 
imitators and admirers in both ancient and modern times, and 
his work has profoundly influenced the drama in England, 
Germany and France. None of the ancient dramatists has 
been more extensively honored by modern editions, such as 
those in Germany by KirckhofT, Nauck, Prinz and Wecklein, 
Nestle, and Schwartz; in England, by Terrell, Verrall, Jerram, 
Way, Mahaffy and Coleridge; and in France by Decharme 
and others. 

Following are some of his best known sayings : 



16 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

"To be modest and pay reverence to the gods; this I 
think to be the most honorable and the wisest thing for 
mortals." 

"The worst of all diseases among men is impudence." 

"Courage profits men naught if God denies His aid." 

"That is the noble man who is full of confident hopes; 
the abject soul despairs." 

"Silence and modesty are the best ornaments of a woman, 
and to remain quietly within the house." 

"The woman who, in her husband's absence, seeks to 
set her beauty forth, mark her as a wanton; she would not 
adorn her person to appear abroad unless she was inclined to 
ill." 

Here is a particularly fine passage on the marks of true 
nobility : 

"There is no outward mark to note the noble, for the 
inward qualities of man are never clearly to be distinguished. 
I have often seen a man of no worth spring from a noble 
sire, and worthy children arise from vile parents, meanness 
grovelling in the rich man's mind and generous feelings in 
the poor. How, then, shall we discern and judge aright? 
By wealth? we shall make use of a bad criterion. Shall it 
be by arms? But who, by looking to the spear, could thereby 
discern the dauntless heart? Will ye not learn to judge the 
man by manners and by deeds? For such men as these 
discharge their duties with honor to the state and to their 
house. Mere flesh without a spirit is nothing more than 
statues in the forum. For the strong arm does not abide 
the shock of battle better than the weak; this depends on 
nature and an intrepid mind." 



HOMER 17 

IV. 

HOMER. 

Seven cities vied for Homer's birth with emulation pious; 
Salamis, Samos, Calaphon, Rhodes, Argos, Athens, Chios. 

— Greek Anthology. 

The preponderance of legendary history, however, indi- 
cates that Smyrna was the birthplace of Homer. There are 
tales, also, that he was blind; and that he was a roving min- 
strel, singing ballads and begging as he wandered from place 
to place. There are no positive biographical facts. Even 
his very existence has been doubted by a formidable school 
of German critics, headed by Professor Frederick Wolf, of 
Halle. But the Iliad exists. So does the Odyssey. They 
constitute Homer, and are all that we really know of Homer, 
at this hour. The work is there. It speaks for itself. Whether 
it is but a skillful compilation of still older ballads, it boots 
us not to inquire. Homer today is just as we found him at 
the dawn of Grecian civilization. If we except the Bible 
and the Veddas, he is the most ancient book in the world. 
He has supplied for all ages the one grand model of the epic 
poem, and his work is the common heritage of the human 
race. 

Translations of Homer exist in all the great modern 
languages. Among the most admired have been those of 
Cesarotti and Monti in Italian, that of Montbel in French, 
that of Voss in German, and those of Pope, Chapman and 
Bryant in English. But the sonorous fluency and vehement 
fire of Homer have never been adequately portrayed in any 
other tongue. As Prof. Blair of Edinburgh declared: "I 
know indeed no author to whom it is more difficult to do 
justice in a translation than Homer. As the plainness of his 
diction, were it literally rendered, would often appear flat 
in any modern language, so, in the midst of that plainness, 



18 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

and not a little heightened by it, there are everywhere break- 
ing forth upon us flashes of native fire, of sublimity and 
beauty, which hardly any language, except his own, could 
preserve. His versification has been universally acknowledged 
to be uncommonly melodious; and to carry, beyond that of 
any poet, a resemblance in the sound to the sense and mean- 
ing." 

As Lord Bacon said, "The best part of beauty is that 
which a picture cannot express," just so true is it that the 
celestial fire of Homer defies the translator's art. Thus, 
the nod of Jupiter, extolled by all critics as one of the noblest 
examples of the sublime in writing, is literally translated: 
"He spoke, and bending his sable brows, gave the awful 
nod; while he shook the celestial locks of his immortal head, 
all Olympus was shaken." Pope translates the passage as 
follows: 

"He spoke: and awful bends his sable brows, 
Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives the nod, 
The stamp of fate, and sanction of a god. 
High heaven with trembling the dread signal took, 
And all Olympus to its center shook." 

Literally translated the majesty of the Homeric concept is 
preserved, but its exquisite euphony is marred; while Pope 
clogs the image in order to make an English rhyme. 

These difficulties and these differences, although they 
may dismay, will not surprise us if we but bear in mind that 
Homer, when he plumed himself for his matchless eagle flight 
to the golden peaks of song, garbed his glowing thoughts in 
the most musical language that ever rippled from the human 
tongue or dropped its fructifying sweetness from the lips of 
man. Yet, these translations often do contain the living 
flame of genuine Homeric fire. Thus, in the twentieth book 
of the Iliad, where all the gods take part, we read again 
from Pope: 



HOMER 19 

"But when the powers descending swelled the fight, 
Then tumult rose, fierce rage, and pale affright: 
Xow through the trembling shores Minerva calls, 
And now she thunders from the Grecian walls. 
Mars, hov'ring o'er his Troy, his terror shrouds 
In gloomy tempests, and a night of clouds: 
Xow through each Trojan heart he fury pours, 
With voice divine, from Illion's topmost towers — 
Above, the sire of gods his thunder rolls, 
And peals on peals redoubled rend the polls; 
Beneath, stern Xeptune shakes the solid ground, 
The forests wave, the mountains nod around; 
Through all her summits tremble Ida's woods, 
And from their sources boil her hundred floods: 
Troy's turrets totter on the rocking plain, 
And the toss'd waves beat the heaving main. 
Deep in the dismal region of the dead, 
Th' infernal monarch rear'd his horrid head, 
Leapt from his throne, lest Xeptune's arm should lay 
His dark dominions open to the day 
And pour in light on Pluto's drear abodes, 
Abhorr'd by men, and dreadful e'en to gods. 
Such wars th' immortals wage; such horrors rend 
The world's vast concave when the gods contend." 

But Homer, despite "the surge and thunder of the Odys- 
sey." and of the Iliad as well, is not all a clash of arms 
and din of steel. He not only runs the gamut of all the pas- 
sions known to man, but in sylvan scenes he reflects X'ature's 
rare artistic power, and paints with most entrancing skill the 
sunset and the dawn, the calm of midnight and the glory of 
the stars. Thus, in book 7 of the Iliad: 

"Xow from the smooth, deep ocean-stream the sun 
Began to climb the heavens, and with new rays 
Smote the surrounding: fields." 



20 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Or in book 8 : 

"Now deep in Ocean sunk the lamp of light 
And drew behind the cloudy veil of night." 

And in book 3 of the Odyssey: 

"But when Aurora, daughter of the dawn, 
With rosy lustre purpled o'er the lawn." 

Again, there is the storm scene, from book 15 of the Iliad: 

"Bursts as a wave that from the clouds impends, 
And swell'd with tempests on the ship descends. 
White are the decks with foam ; the winds aloud 
Howl o'er the masts and sing through ev'ry shroud : 
Pale, trembling, tir'd, the sailors freeze with fears; 
And instant death on every wave appears." 

Now let us contrast the tempest with this peaceful scene of 
lovely night and all its sylvan beauty and pastoral calm: 
"As when in heaven the stars around the glittering moon 
beam loveliest amid the breathless air, and in clear outline 
appear every hill, sharp peak and woody dell; deep upon 
deep the sky breaks open, and each star shines forth while 
joy fills the shepherd's heart." 

"The multitude of things in Homer is wonderful," says 
Hazlett — "the splendor, the truth, the power, the variety." 
As Matthew Arnold said, "the Homeric poems are the most 
important poetical monument existing." To the ancient 
Greek, another critic says, "Homer was Bible, Shakespeare, 
Milton, and Domesday Book in one." All poets since his 
time have been indebted to Homer. As Pope observes, even 
"the periphrases and circumlocutions by which Homer 
expresses the single act of dying have supplied succeeding 
poets with all their manners of phrasing it." 

In Prof. James Anthony Froude's essay on "The Science 
of History" it is observed: "The Tliad' is from two to three 
thousand years older than 'Macbeth,' and yet it is as fresh 



HOMER 21 

as if it had been written yesterday. We have there no lessons 
save in the emotions which rise in us as we read. Homer had 
no philosophy; he never struggles to press upon us his views 
about this or that; you can scarcely tell, indeed, whether his 
sympathies are Greek or Trojan; but he represents to us faith- 
fully the men and women among whom he lived. He sang 
the tale of Troy, he touched his lyre, he drained the golden 
beaker in the halls of men like those on whom he was con- 
ferring immortality. And thus, although no Agamemnon, 
king of men, ever led a Grecian fleet to Ilium; though no 
Priam sought the midnight tent of Achilles; though Ulysses 
and Diomed and Nestor were but names, and Helen but a 
dream, yet, through Homer's power of representing men and 
women, those old Greeks will still stand out from amidst 
the darkness of the ancient world with a sharpness of outline 
which belongs to no period of history except the most recent. 
For the mere hard purposes of history, the Tliad' and 'Odyssey' 
are the most effective books which ever were written." 

Says Addison (Spectator No. 417): "Homer is in his 
province when he is describing a battle or a multitude, a 
hero or a god. Virgil is never better pleased than when he is 
in his elysium, or copying out an entertaining picture. Homer's 
epithets generally mark out what is great; Virgil's, what is 
agreeable. Nothing can be more magnificent than the figure 
Jupiter makes in the first Iliad, nor more charming than that 
of Venus in the first Aeneid." But Virgil boldly translated 
whole passages from Homer and placed them in the Aeneid 
as his own. Homer's work is original in execution, theme and 
concept. Virgil, Tasso, Milton and the rest have had their 
models by which to work; but Homer's model was Nature 
alone, and without human pattern, guide or compass, he 
produced the greatest epic work the world has ever known. 

As old Sir John Denham said so long ago, in his "Progress 
of Learning:" 



22 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

"I can no more believe old Homer blind, 
Than those who say the sun hath never shined ; 
The age wherein he lived was dark, but he 
Could not want sight, who taught the world to see." 



v. 

PLATO. 



Aristocles, afterwards known as Plato, "the broad- 
browed," was born on the island of Aegina, B. C. 427, and 
died at Athens in 347 B. C. Through his mother he was a 
descendant of Solon, one of the "Seven Wise Men of Greece," 
and on his father's side he traced his lineage from Codrus, 
one of the early kings of Athens. He enjoyed such early 
opportunities as a comfortable fortune could provide, and in 
his youth was accomplished in all the culture of the times. 

Intellectually, Plato was the child of Socrates and the 
parent of Aristotle. At the age of twenty, upon coming 
under the spell of the master mind of Socrates, he is said to 
have burned all the poems he had written, and from that time 
forth, for the remaining sixty years of his life, his capacious 
mind was wholly occupied with the profound speculations 
which have since dazzled the world with their brilliancy and 
wielded a constantly growing influence upon the minds of 
men. 

He remained a pupil of Socrates until B. C. 399, when 
judicial murder put an end to the pure and noble life of that 
most majestic character of antiquity and destroyed what 
George Henry Lewes, in his History of Philosophy, called 
"the grandest figure in the world's Pantheon: the bravest, 
truest, simplest, wisest of mankind." We may the better 
understand the feelings of Plato, upon being thus deprived 
of his master, when we read the "Phaedo," detailing the 
events of Socrates' last day on earth, and developing, in the 



PLATO 23 

course of the dialogue, the beautiful doctrine of the immortality 
of the soul. Xenophon, also a disciple of Socrates and a 
companion of Plato, has expressed not less truly the feelings 
of both upon that most pathetic occasion, in the touching 
and tender tribute so gracefully set forth in the Memo- 
rabilia (iv. 7). 

Shocked by the cruelty and crushed by the ingratitude 
and bigotry of the tyrants who then ruled Athens in the 
name of democracy, Plato departed into foreign lands. It 
is believed that he visited every country in which learning 
flourished in any degree. He delved into the lore of the 
Egyptians and studied the philosophies of the east. His 
itinerary is not known with certainty. But it is known that 
he was absent from Athens a great deal during the ten years 
following the death of Socrates. In the course of his peregrina- 
tions, Plato visited Dionysius the Elder, tyrant of Syracuse. 
The tyrant caused him to be sold into slavery. Plato, how- 
ever, was soon ransomed by his friends. 

Returning finally to Athens, in the fortieth year of his 
age, Plato set up his school in the groves of the Academia 
and began to expound his dialectics and to teach the im- 
mortal doctrines which still encircle his name with a halo of 
eternal light. To this school flocked the bright minds of the 
world. Here was fashioned the sinewy intellect of Aristotle 
and here was moulded the mighty genius of Demosthenes. 

"Hither as to a fountain 
Other suns repair, and in their urns 
Draw golden light." 

Learning of Plato's vast renown, Dionysius of Syracuse wrote 
to express the hope that the philosopher would not think ill 
of him and received this august and laconic reply: "Plato 
hath not leisure to think of Dionysius." For a period of 
forty years, and until death ended his labors, Plato continued 
to write and teach. It is believed that all his writings have 
reached us unimpaired. 



24 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

"For richness and beauty of imagination," says one of 
the foremost English critics, "no philosophic writer, ancient 
or modern, is comparable to Plato. The only fault of hfe 
imagination is such an excess of fertility as allows it some- 
times to obscure his judgment. It frequently carries him 
into allegory, fiction, enthusiasm, and the airy regions of 
mystical theology. The philosopher is, at times, lost in the 
poet. But whether we be edified with the matter or not 
(and much edification he often affords), we are always enter- 
tained with the manner; and left with a strong impression of 
the sublimity of the author's genius." 

Associated with Plato's doctrine of immortality was his 
doctrine of the soul's reminiscence, a subconscious recollection 
of beauties contemplated in the pre-earthly existence, a 
thought most beautifully expressed in Wordsworth's ode on 
"Intimations of Immortality:" 

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

And cometh from afar: 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 

And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God who is our home." 

The writings of Plato not only exercised great influence 
upon such minds as those of Cicero and Plutarch, followers of 
"the vision splendid" in ancient times, but they profoundly 
affected the Stoics as well as the early Christian Fathers, 
and cast their mystic spell far into future ages, where we find 
their indelible impress upon much of the world's best litera- 
ture. One cannot proceed far, in either literature or philos- 
ophy, without encountering the massive intellect and the 
golden eloquence of Plato. Thus do we find it reflected in 
Addison's "Cato," Act V., Sc. I: 



PLUTARCH 25 

"It must be so — Plato, thou reasonest well. — 

Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 

This longing after immortality? 

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, 

Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul 

Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 

Tis the divinity that stirs within us ; 

'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter, 

And intimates eternity to man." 

Plato is greatest in his metaphysics. He has been aptly 
called "the Shakespeare of ideas." He is not so happy in the 
political writings of his later years. He totally misconceived 
the duties of citizenship and the proper functions of the 
state. Mr. Grote thinks that he borrowed much of his "Re- 
public" from the Spartan constitution of Lycurgas. He 
would have done far better to have elaborated the work of his 
own great ancestor, Solon, in the constitution of Athens. 
Of these later works we can only observe, with Prof. Jowett: 
"The wings of his imagination have begun to droop, but his 
experience of life remains, and he turns from the contempla- 
tion of the eternal to take a last sad look at human affairs." 
Plato's "Republic" was the natural progenitor of More's 
"Utopia," Bacon's "New Atlantis," Harrington's "Oceana," 
and Campanula's "City of the Sun." 



VI. 
PLUTARCH. 



The exact dates of the birth and death of Plutarch are 
unknown, but the period of his life may be safely approxi- 
mated at A. D. 50 to A. D. 120. Although he established no 
new school of thought, and although his style of composi- 
tion is not distinguished for any peculiar beauty or elegance, 
he is nevertheless one of the most celebrated writers of an- 



26 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

tiquity, and is remarkable for his humane principles and his 
unsullied moral excellence. 

Plutarch was born at the little town of Chaeronaea, and 
spent his last days there. It is also known that he was en- 
trusted with a diplomatic mission to Rome, and resided for 
some time at that great capital, where, in the time of Domitian, 
he delivered lectures on philosophy. There is a report, 
doubted by many, but believed by Langhorne and others, 
that he was tutor to the emperor Trajan. Certainly the 
humane traits of that excellent prince would suggest naught 
against the supposition. It is definitely known, however, 
that Plutarch's nephew, Sextus, was a preceptor of the great 
Marcus Aurelius, who publicly acknowledged, in his "Medita- 
tions," his indebtedness to that philosopher, in terms peculi- 
arly applicable to Plutarch himself. 

The greater part of the writings of Plutarch are now no 
longer extant. Of those that remain, civilization is chiefly 
indebted to him for his "Lives of Illustrious Men." 

Among all the biographical works ever written, in 
either ancient or modern times, Plutarch's Lives will easily 
rank first. No writer has had a greater influence upon the 
youthful mind. He was the first companion of the budding 
genius of Moliere. Alfieri was first inspired with a passion for 
literature by reading Plutarch's Lives. The great Napoleon 
received his first inspiration from the same source. He has 
been accorded the highest praise by such critics as Petrarch, 
Montaigne, St. Evremont and Montesquieu, and was Mon- 
taigne's favorite author. Sir John Lubbock places Plutarch's 
Lives among the one hundred best books which should be in 
every library and read by every person pretending to any 
degree of culture. The world's literature in all ages since his 
day has been embellished by this great work. 

In 1579 Sir Thomas North translated the Lives from a 
French version into English, and this work beyond all doubt 
furnished Shakespeare with the materials for Coriolanus ? 



PLUTARCH 27 

Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. 
In some instances the great English dramatist has appro- 
priated the language of Plutarch almost verbatim. This is 
particularly true of his "Julius Caesar," and also of his 
"Coriolanus." "The Life of Theseus," and "The Life of 
Pericles" also served in Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's 
Dream and in Pericles. 

It is remarkable how great a portion of our knowledge of 
the illustrious men of antiquity is drawn from Plutarch. 
Thus, Lord Bacon says: "One of the Seven was wont to say: 
That laws were like cob-webs; where the small flies were 
caught and the great break through.' " But none of the 
Seven Wise Men of Greece ever said any such thing. In the 
life of Solon, Plutarch records the fact that while the great 
Athenian was working on his laws, he was visited by Anarch- 
arsis, the Scythian, and "when Anarcharsis heard what Solon 
was doing, he laughed at the folly of thinking that he could 
restrain the unjust proceedings and avarice of his fellow 
citizens by written laws, which, he said, resembled in every 
way spiders' webs, and would, like them, catch and hold only 
the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful would easily 
break through them." Curiously enough, the modern world, 
following Bacon, has quite unjustly attributed this Scythian 
sentiment to Solon. 

Many are the noble sentiments that gleam in the "Lives," 
as well as in the "Morals," of Plutarch. However, space 
permits us to present but few: 

"It is more fitting to err on the side of religion, from a 
regard to ancient and received opinion, than to err through 
obstinacy and presumption." 

And this, on education: 

"Men derive no greater advantage from a liberal educa- 
tion than that it tends to soften and polish their nature, by 
improving their reasoning faculties and training their habits, 



28 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

thus producing an evenness of temper and banishing all 
extremes. " 

And this, on statesmanship: 

"The honest and upright statesman pays no regard to 
the popular voice except with this view, that the confidence 
it procures him may facilitate his designs and crown them 
with success." In other words, a great statesman must do the 
right and just thing, whether his constituency wish him to do 
so or not. 



VII. 

MENANDER. 



Menander, a native of Athens (born B. C. 342, died 
B. C. 291), was the most celebrated poet of the "new comedy." 
His father was a famous Athenian general. Menander was 
an intimate friend of the philosopher Epicurus, whose 
teaching was reflected in the light-hearted, sprightly nature 
and frolicsome disposition of the poet. He was of handsome 
person, gay, and fond of luxury, but does not appear to have 
been grossly addicted to the vices of his time. He was the 
author of more than a hundred plays, and for several centuries 
after his death his plays were the most popular among the 
Grecian comedies. 

Menander spent the greater part of his life mingling in 
the swirl of Athenian gaiety, while residing at his villa near 
the city. The King of Egypt, one of his ardent admirers, 
extended to him a pressing invitation to reside as his guest at 
the Egyptian capital, but the Greek poet preferred his own 
care-free life to the gilded conventionality and soul-bought 
largess of a royal court. 

Not a single one of his plays has survived to modern 
times, but we may form some conception of their excellence 
by the numerous imitations afforded us in the plays of Plautus 



MENANDER 29 

and Terence. Ancient critics extolled the writings of Menan- 
der for their poetic artistry, refined wit and sententious 
humor; and for his grasp of human nature, and the purity of 
his moral concepts. More than a thousand fragments of his 
works have come down to us, and they in no wise detract 
from the esteem in which we are constrained to hold him 
because of the laudations of ancient authorities. 

We are indebted to German scholarship for the best 
extant editions of the "Fragments:" one by Meineke (Berlin, 
1841) and the other by Kock (Leipzig, 1888). 

Menander's incisive wit is aptly set forth in his dealings 
with the ' 'eternal feminine," as when he says: 

"Happy am I who have no wife!" Or, this: "Where are 
women, there are all kinds of mischief." And this: "The 
wife ought to play the second part, the husband ruling in 
everything; for there is no family in which the wife has had 
the upper hand which has not gone to ruin." 

Elsewhere he says: "To marry a wife, if we regard the 
truth, is an evil, but it is a necessary evil." How suggestive, 
this, of St. Chrysostom's description of woman as "a neces- 
sary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domes- 
tic peril, a deadly fascination and a painted ill!" And of the 
outburst of honest old Thomas Otway, in "The Orphan" 
(Act iii., Sc. 1): 

"What mighty ills have not been done by woman! 
Who was't betray 'd the Capitol? A woman; 
Who lost Mark Antony the world? A woman; 
Who was the cause of a long ten years' war, 
And laid at last old Troy in ashes? Woman; 
Destructive, damnable, deceitful woman!" 

In the same spirit did Milton cry out in the anguish of his 
heart (Paradise Lost, Bk. ix., 1. 888) : 



30 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

"Oh, why did God, 
Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven 
With spirits masculine, create at last 
This novelty on earth, this fair defect 
Of nature, and not fill the world at once 
With men as angels without feminine, 
Or find some other way to generate 
Mankind? This mischief had not then befallen." 

Following his anti-feminine bent, Menander also observed that 
"A daughter is an embarrassing and ticklish possession." 
Perhaps he gave the cue to Sheridan (The Duenna, Act i., 
sc. 3): 

"If a daughter you have, she's the plague of your life; 
No peace shall you know, though you've buried your wife! 
At twenty she mocks at the duty you taught her — 
Oh, what a plague is an obstinate daughter!" 

In another fragment Menander pursues the same thought: 
"A wise son is a delight to his father, while a daughter is a 
troublesome possession." And then he adds: "Of all wild 
beasts on earth or in sea, the greatest is a woman." 

But Menander did not write solely to provide texts for 
the mysogonists. Passing from the contemplation of senti- 
ments so little promotive of marital felicity and domestic 
concord, we find our poet gifted with a wealth of wisdom 
denied to many minds of more sober hue. Thus, he says: 

"Evil communications corrupt good manners" — a phrase 
we afterwards find in the New Testament. 

"No just man has ever become suddenly rich." 
"It does not become any living man to say, 'This will 
not happen to me.' " 

"Every wise and honorable man hates a lie." 
"Nothing is more useful to a man than silence." 
"Whosoever lends a greedy ear to a slanderous report is 



MENANDER 31 

either himself of a radically bad disposition or a mere child 
in sense." 

"How pleasant a thing it is for brothers to dwell together 
in unity" — almost the exact words of the 133rd Psalm: 
"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to 
dwell together in unity!" 

"It is the mind that ought to be rich; for the riches of this 
world only feed the eyes, and serve merely as a veil to cover 
the realities of life." 

That Menander knew something about the science of 
health preservation is evident from the following: 

"The plague dwells where sanitary laws are neglected." 

Menander won the prize in comedy at the age of twenty- 
one, and achieved seven similar triumphs during his dramatic 
career. He was fond of athletic sports, and was drowned 
while swimming in the harbor of the Pireaeus. Menander 
loved the country life, and it was a great saying of his that 
"Men are taught virtue and love of independence by living 
in the country." 

Finally, he was not oblivious of the lesson of mortality: 
"If thou wishest to know what thou art, look at the monu- 
ments of the dead as thou passest along the road; there thou 
wilt find the bones and light dust of kings, and tyrants, and 
wise men, and of those who prided themselves on their blood 
and riches, on their glorious deeds, and on the beauty of their 
persons; but none of these things could resist the power of 
time. All men have a common grave. Looking at these 
things, thou mayest know what thou art." Yea, verily! 
As it is written in the Book of Genesis (iii:19) — "For dust 
thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." 



32 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

VIII. 
PINDAR. 

It is related by Plutarch, in his Life of Alexander the 
Great, that when Thebes fell before his conquering arms 
only the house of Pindar was spared, and thus did the poet's 
posterity escape the wholesale destruction visited upon their 
city; so great was Alexander's veneration of the memory of 
the Theban poet. The Spartan soldiery, noted for implacable 
cruelty, had already, on a previous occasion, shown by their 
forbearance the same pious regard for the inspired Theban. 

Thus was impressed upon the ancient mind the fame of 
Pindar, the father of lyric poetry. He was born at or near 
Thebes, B. C. 522, and died B. C. 442. He was educated in 
music and poetry, and showed great talent at an early age. 
An old Grecian legend recites that in his youth a swarm of 
bees alighted upon his lips, attracted by the sweetness that 
was soon to richly trickle forth its honeyed harmonies of 
entrancing verse. Pindar drank deeply of the pure Pierian 
spring, and soared on golden wing unto the highest pinnacle 
of song. His praises were sounded by such eminent masters 
as Cicero and Pausanias. Plato called him the "divine 
Pindar," and distinguished him by the epithet "most wise." 
Clement of Alexandria, one of the early Christian Fathers, 
declared him to have been well versed in the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures. Pindar was contemporary with Aeschylus, and shared, 
with that great master of Greek tragedy, the warm personal 
friendship of King Hiero of Syracuse, at whose court he 
resided for four years. Of the golden treasury of verse created 
by his magic pen, only the "Triumphal Odes" have reached 
our times. Of all his paeans, odes and hymns, which smote 
the ear of antiquity with the voice of a god and trembled away 
into the silence of the ages, the greater part are lost; but the 
dying echo of his silver-throated trump still lingers in such 



PINDAR 33 

lines as these, describing the islands of the blessed, in the 
Second Olympic Ode: 

"But they whose spirit thrice refined 
Each arduous conquest could endure, 
And keep the firm and perfect mind 

From all contagion pure; 
Along the stated path of Jove 
To Saturn's royal courts above 

Have trod their heavenly way 
Where round the islands of the bless'd 

The Ocean breezes play; 
There golden flow'rets ever blow, 
Some springing from earth's verdant breast, 
These on the lonely branches glow, 
While those are nurtured by the waves below. 
From them the inmates of these seats divine 
Around their hands and hair the woven garlands twine." 

In his translations Pindar has not been so fortunate as 
have others among the Greek classics. Among the most 
elaborate of modern criticisms is the profound and scholarly 
work of Schmidt, in German, and the brilliant essay of Ville- 
main, in French. Among the most successful English trans- 
lations are those of Carey, Abraham Moore, Morice, and 
Baring. Pindar has had many imitators among both the 
ancients and the moderns. The Pindaric Odes of Thomas 
Gray are the purest specimens of their kind in English. The 
many attempts among the Latins to imitate Pindar were 
deprecated by wise old Horace, who said, in his "Carmina:" 

"He who studies to imitate the poet Pindar, O Julius, 
relies on artificial wings, fastened on with wax." 

Horace thus enumerates the numerous themes upon 
which the prolific muse of Pindar was employed : 



34 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

"Whether th' immortal gods he sings 

In a no less immortal strain, 

Or the great acts of god-descended kings, 

Who in his numbers still survive and reign, 

Whether in Pisa's race he please 

To carve in polish'd verse the conqueror's image; 

Whether some brave man's untimely fate 

In words worth dying for he celebrate; 

Such mournful and such pleasing words, 

As joy to his mother's and his mistress' grief affords." 

The quotation is from the ode of Horace beginning 
"Pindarum quisquis," etc., and the translation is by Cowley. 

Pindar was probably the premier panegyrist of all history. 
His fame extended throughout all the Hellenic states, and by 
every great city and state he was called upon to compose the 
choruses, hymns and triumphal odes for great festive occa- 
sions. And therefore Horace quite truly says that many 
ancient kings who would otherwise be unknown to fame 

<<* * * m hjg num bers still survive and reign." 

In concluding this sketch, let us offer one Pindaric 
phrase that has stood the test of twenty-five centuries and is 
still true today: "In every form of government a straight 
forward, plain-speaking man is most respected, whether it 
be a despotism, or tumultous democracy, or where the edu- 
cated few hold sway." 

IX. 

ANACREON. 

I see Anacreon smile and sing; 
His silver tresses breathe perfume; 
His cheeks display a second spring 
Of roses, taught by wine to bloom. 
Away, deceitful Care! away, 
And let me listen to his lay. 

— Akenside, Ode XIII., "On Lyric Poetry." 



ANACREON 35 

Anacreon, the leading amatory poet of Greece, and one 
of the greatest lyric bards of all time, flourished during the 
greater part of the sixth century before the Christian era, 
and was contemporary with Cyrus the Great, King Polycrates 
of Samos, and Hipparchus of Athens. He was a native of 
Teos, a city of Ionia. It is said that by the captivating strains 
of his songs he softened the heart of Polycrates and developed 
in the tyrant a spirit of kindness toward his subjects. Hip- 
parchus, the Athenian tyrant, said by Plato to have been the 
first to edit the poems of Homer and cause them to be sung 
at public festivals, heard of the fame of the Ionic bard and 
sent a galley with fifty oars to bring him across the Aegean 
sea. So greatly was Anacreon esteemed in his native city 
that his likeness was stamped upon the coins; and in Athens, 
after his death, a statue of him was erected at the Acrop- 
olis. 

Only a few of the odes of Anacreon remain, but they are 
sufficient to portray the enchanting elegance of his flowing 
verse. Thomas Moore says, in the preface to his translation 
of the "Odes of Anacreon:" "After the very enthusiastic 
eulogiums bestowed both by ancients and moderns upon the 
poems of Anacreon, we need not be diffident at expressing 
our raptures at their beauty, nor hesitate to pronounce them 
the most polished remains of antiquity. They are, indeed, 
all beauty, all enchantment." So speaks one of the great 
masters of English verse. We need not, however, seek the 
grand conflagra ions of Homer in the love-sparks of the Teian 
muse; for, as he himself has sung in the Second Ode (Moore's 
translation): 

"Give me the harp of epic song, 

Which Homer's fingers thrilled along; 

But tear- away the sanguine string, 

For war is not the theme I sing." 

Quite to the contrary, indeed, we find him ever "dancing to 
the lute's soft strain," where "purple clusters twine," and 



36 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

"hyacinths sweet odors breathe," amid the "perfumed gales 
from beds of flowers," tuning his lyre to "love's sweet silver 
sounds;" celebrating "blithe Bacchus, the generous god of 
wine," or "Venus, love's sweet smiling queen, rising from her 
silver sea," cheering his convivial votaries with "golden 
goblets" of "rosy wine" while trilling forth pulsating 
symphonies of love. 

One of the choicest bits of lyric art is his Fifty-third Ode, 
"On the Rose," from which are culled the following familiar 
lines (Bourne's translation), detailing the origin of the poet's 
favorite flower: 

"A drop of pure nectareous dew 

From heaven the bless'd immortals threw; 

A while it trembled on the thorn, 

And then the lovely rose was born. 

To Bacchus they the flower assign, 

And roses still his brows intwine." 

The Fifth Ode of Bourne's translation is also inspired by the 
rose, which he describes as adding "fresh fragrance to the 
wine;" and then the poet strikes his quivering harp and 
warbles forth in most exquisite mood: 

"Oh, lovely rose! to thee I sing, 
Thou sweetest, fairest child of spring! 
Oh, thou art dear to all the gods, 
The darlling of their bless'd abodes. 
Thy breathing buds and blossoms fair 
Entwine young Cupid's golden hair, 
When gayly dancing, hand in hand, 
He joins the Graces' lovely band." 

Anon the old bard laughs at himself and makes merry 
over his advancing age, as when, in the Eleventh Ode, he 
sings: 



ANACREON 37 

" 'Anacreon', the lasses say, 

'Old fellow, you have had your day,' " etc. 

In the Nineteenth Ode he very gravely sets forth his reasons 

for drinking : 

"The earth drinks up the genial rains 
Which deluge all her thirsty plains ; 
The lofty trees that pierce the sky 
Drain up the earth and leave her dry; 
Th' insatiate sea imbibes, each hour, 
The welcome breeze that brings the show'r; 
The sun, whose fires so fiercely burn, 
Absorbs the wave; and, in her turn, 
The modest moon enjoys, each night, 
Large draughts of his celestial light. 
Then, sapient sirs, pray tell me why, 
If all things drink, why may not I?" 

From such ribald merriment he turns to sighs of tender 
sentiment and rosy love like his ode, "The Dream," of which 
Madame Dacier says that it is one of the finest and most 
gallant odes of antiquity, and has been greatly admired by 
all who "rove the flowry paths of love." 

How like the mellow-throated nightingale's melodious 
note, trilling flute-like from some scented Lydian grove, are 
the sweet, seductive measures of Anacreon, with all his 
lilting levities, piping plaintively his tender songs of love, 
breathing fragrance where they blow, murmuring his soft 
Aeolian sounds through rosy bowers, or in the fronded shadow 
of the trees, where yet the loitering Graces love to linger 
among the whispering violets, while wood-nymphs dance 
upon the sward! He did not essay the empyrean heights of 
song, buoyed by the battle-trump, to revel in the conflicts 
of the gods. His was a gentler muse, lulled by the breath of 
flutes, seeking the sequestered nooks, frolicking among the 
flowers, basking with the satyrs and the fauns, luxuriating 



38 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

in the languor of the lapping wave, titillating among the 
fountains, lolling in blossoms, or sipping nectar from the 
silver dews. Frown upon him as we may, deprecate his morals 
as we must, no sweeter song is treasured in the heart than 
that which beauty purloins from the lips of youth; and, so 
long as men are men and maids are maids, youth and health 
will succumb to Anacreon's subtle and subduing charm, or 
struggle to resist his soft, bewitching spell. He is a living 
flower among garlands that are dead. Gone is the muse from 
Hellas; gone are the dream and song; gone is the haunting 
sweetness of the lute's voluptuous lay; but while aught of 
Anacreon remains, their pictured memories will forever glint 
and glow along the golden sands of Time. 



X. 

THEOCRITUS. 

Theocritus, the father of Greek pastoral poetry, and the 
first great artist of his kind, flourished in the first half of the 
third century B. C. He was born in Syracuse, and King 
Hiero II was his friend. But his great patron was Ptolmey 
Philadelphus, King of Egypt, the founder of the Alexandrian 
Library. We have no further biographical data touching his 
career aside from the fact that some thirty Idyls bear his 
name; some of these, no doubt, being spurious. 

To the student of literature, Theocritus, however meager 
his remains, will be forever treasured as the founder of that 
delightful school of poesy which has enriched all the lan- 
guages of civilization with its placid portrayal of country life. 
Theocritus was followed by two Greek pastoral poets, Bion 
and Moschus. But his greatest disciple in ancient times was 
Virgil. 

In his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Prof. 
Blair observes that Theocritus is distinguished for the sim- 



THEOCRITUS 39 

plicity of his sentiments; for the sweetness and harmony of 
his numbers, and for the richness of his scenery and descrip- 
tion. "He is the original, of which Virgil is the imitator. 
For most of Virgil's highest beauties in his Eclogues are copies 
from Theocritus; in many places he has done nothing more 
than translate him." Theocritus followed Nature; whereas, 
Virgil followed Theocritus. From Virgil the bucolic motive 
spread to Catullus and Horace, and finally through all the 
languages of western Europe. 

Dante, Petrarch, Giovanni and Boccaccio led the Virgilian 
revival in Italy in the fourteenth century, being followed in 
the sixteenth century by Tasso and Guarini, all of whom 
produced pastorals patterned after the ancient classics. In 
France the pastoral ideal culminated in the "Astree," a 
prose romance published in the seventeenth century by 
d'Urife. In Spain we find its rarest triumph in the "Galatea" 
of Cervantes, and in Germany the pastoral reached its most 
perfect form in Goethe's "Hermann und Dorothea," which 
harks back to the simplicity and purity of Theocritus. 

In England the pastoral sprang into being under the 
magic touch of Edmund Spenser, in the Shepherd's Calendar, 
and blossomed into the full fruition of its undying charms in 
the works of Fletcher, Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, and in 
the "Comus" and "Lycidas" of John Milton. The critics 
are not partial to the pastorals of Pope and Ambrose Philips, 
published early in the eighteenth century. In more recent 
times, the traces of Theocritus are readily discernible in 
Tennyson's "Dora" and "The Miller's Daughter." Thus 
has the lay of the Sicilian shepherd made its pipings audible 
to every ear attuned to the harmonies of nature, through all 
the great languages of ancient and modern times. In what- 
ever tongue he speaks, his idyls retain their pristine fresh- 
ness to the present hour. What rustic scene, for example, 
could be more truly drawn than this: 



40 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

"Poplars and elms above their foliage spread, 

Lent a cool shade, and wav'd the breezy head; 

Below, a stream from the nymph's sacred cave, 

In free meanders led its murm'ring wave. 

In the warm sunbeams, verdant shades among, 

Shrill grasshoppers renew'd their plaintive song; 

At distance far, conceal'd in shades, alone, 

Sweet Philomela pour'd her tuneful moan; 

The lark, the goldfinch, warbled lays of love, 

And sweetly pensive coo'd the turtle-dove; 

While honey-bees, forever on the wing, 

Humm'd round the flowers, or sipt the silver spring; 

The rich, ripe season gratified the sense 

With summer's sweets, and autumn's redolence. 

Apples and pears lay strew'd in heaps around, 

And the plum's loaded branches kiss'd the ground." 

In his later days Theocritus grew dissatisfied with the 
court of Hiero, and retired to the country, where the re- 
mainder of his life was spent in contemplation of those rural 
scenes which his pen has preserved with a fidelity and sim- 
plicity so often imitated, so rarely equalled, so universally 
admired, and forever unsurpassed. He it was who vocalized 
the shepherd's song and taught the rustic maid to speak the 
language of the heart; who tinted the wealth of nature with 
the wonders of human speech; and he it was who found, two 
thousand years before great Shakespeare's time, 

" * * *tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 

As James Russell Lowell so beautifully said, in his oration 
on the 250th anniversary of the founding of Harvard College : 
"The gardens of Sicily are empty now, but the bees from all 
climes still fetch honey from the tiny garden plot of Theoc- 
ritus." 



PART TWO 

GREAT ROMAN AUTHORS 



I. LlVY. 

II. Horace. 

III. Virgil. 

IV. Lucan. 
V. Ovid. 

VI. Lucretius. 

VII. Plautus. 

VIII. Marcus Aurelius. 

IX. Sallust. 

X. QUINTILIAN. 



(41) 



Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul! 
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, 
Lone mother of dead empires. 

—BYRON, "Childe Harold," Canto iv. St. 78. 



(42) 



LIVY 43 

I. 

LIVY. 

In the monastery of Justina (anciently the temple of 
Juno) at Rome, in the year 1413, there was discovered a 
monument bearing the following inscription: "The bones of 
Titus Livius, of Padua, a man worthy to be approved of all 
mankind ; by whose almost invincible pen the acts and exploits 
of the Romans were written." 

Never was epitaph more true, and never was funereal 
inscription more generally or justly accepted as truth through- 
out all subsequent history. 

Born fifty-eight years before the Christian era, Livy 
moved amidst the literary glamour and imperial blazonry of 
that Augustan Age of which he was himself an ornament so 
splendid and a type so pure. The personal friend of one 
emperor and the preceptor of another, history with one voice 
acclaims him among the greatest of the Romans. Tacitus 
and the younger Pliny bear witness to the exalted esteem in 
which he was held. 

Livy was the friend of Augustus Caesar, who employed 
him as tutor of his grandson Claudius, who later became 
emperor. But there is no record of any attempt upon the 
part of Livy to reap a financial profit from his high connec- 
tions. All his spare time was employed in writing his great 
history of Rome, a work to which he had dedicated his life, 
and from which he never swerved until his vast labors were 
completed. 

Livy's history of Rome comprised one hundred and forty- 
two books. He did not long survive the completion of his 
gigantic task, and died at the age of seventy-five years. 

But thirty-five of the one hundred and forty-two books 
of Livy have come down to us. "What a school of public 
and private virtue had been opened to us at the resurrection 
of learning," exclaims Lord Bolingbroke, "if the later his- 



44 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

torians of the Roman commonwealth and the first of the 
succeeding monarchy had come down to us entire. The few 
that are come down, though broken and imperfect, compose 
the best body of history we have; nay, the only body of 
ancient history which deserves to be an object of study. 
Appian, Dion Cassius, nay, even Plutarch included, make us 
but poor amends for what is lost of Livy." 

It has been most truly remarked of the clear, elegant and 
lucid style of Livy, that he could be labored without affec- 
tation; diffusive without tediousness; and argumentative 
without pedantry. And if history is indeed philosophy 
teaching by examples, we lose none of its moral values in the 
fervent glow of Livy's matchless periods. In proof of this 
we need but a single specimen of his lofty style. Let us take 
it from the first book of his history: 

"To the following considerations I wish every one seriously 
and earnestly to attend; by what kind of men, and by what 
sort of conduct, in peace and war, the empire has been both 
acquired and extended; then, as discipline gradually declined, 
let him follow in his thought the structure of ancient morals, 
at first, as it were, leaning aside, then sinking farther and 
farther, then beginning to fall precipitate, until he arrives at 
the present times, when our vices have attained to such a 
height of enormity that we can no longer endure either the 
burden of them or the sharpness of the necessary remedies. 
This is the great advantage to be derived from the study of 
history; indeed the only one which can make it answer any 
profitable and salutary purpose; for, being abundantly 
furnished with clear and distinct examples of every kind of 
conduct, we may select for ourselves, and for the state to 
which we belong, such as are worthy of imitation; and care- 
fully noting such as, being dishonorable in their principles are 
equally so in their effects, learn to avoid them." 

When we accept history in the sense expressed by this 
great Roman, we may more fully grasp the truth of Bacon's 



HORACE 45 

observation that "histories make men wise;" and the more we 
study the comparatively small portion of Livy that has been 
transmitted to our times, the more we feel inclined to lament, 
with Bolingbroke, the loss of the greater portion. Livy never 
strains a point to make an epigram; but in the course of his 
works we find him, in the heat of composition, throwing off, 
like sparks from an anvil, such glowing thoughts as these: 

"Men are seldom blessed with good sense and good 
fortune at the same time." 

"What is honorable is also safest." 

"No wickedness has any ground of reason." 

"Treachery, though at first very cautious, in the end 
betrays itself." 

"Prosperity engenders sloth." 

"Experience is the teacher of fools." 

"As soon as woman begins to be ashamed of what she 
ought not, she will not be ashamed of what she ought." 



II. 

HORACE. 



At the little town of Venusia, in the year 63 B. C, was 
born Quintus Horatius Flaccus, the greatest lyrical poet of 
Rome. While finishing his education at Athens, Horace 
made the acquaintance of Brutus, then on his march to 
Macedonia, following the assassination of Julius Caesar. The 
poet was then only in his twenty-third year, but was made a 
staff officer in the army of Brutus, whose fortunes he followed 
to the ill-starred field of Philippi. Returning to Italy only 
to find his estates confiscated, he betook himself to the im- 
perial city, and in that world-metropolis his literary genius 
soon gained the acquaintance and friendship of the poet 
Virgil, who in turn presented him to Maecenas, the court 
politician and patron of letters, who thereafter became the 



46 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

poet's life-long friend. Through Maecenas, Horace met the 
emperor, Augustus, with whom, for the remainder of his life, 
he lived upon terms of closest intimacy. 

Upon one occasion the emperor upbraided his poetic 
friend for having never mentioned him in his odes and epistles. 
"I am angry with you," he wrote to Horace, "because you 
do not especially choose me to converse with in the principal 
part of your writings of this nature. Do you fear lest the 
appearance of my intimacy should injure you with posterity?" 
To this genial and complimentary rebuke Horace made 
fitting response in the first epistle of his second book. 

Augustus Caesar was quite fond of both Horace and 
Virgil, and often, it is related, while sitting at his meals, with 
Virgil at his right hand and Horace at his left, the emperor 
made a jest of Virgil's shortness of breath and Horace's watery 
eyes by observing that he sat between sighs and tears. 

Philip Francis has summarized the views of the critics 
of all ages in the statement that Horace "has united in his 
lyric poetry the enthusiasm of Pindar, the majesty of Alcaeus, 
the tenderness of Sappho and the charming levities of Anac- 
reon." But he is neither so gross as Anacreon nor so sensual 
as Sappho. Likewise it may be said that he is bold without 
blustering, and majestic without austerity. His strength is 
in his unfailing delicacy of poise, his limpid utterance, his 
translucent phrase, his wholesome sanity, his bewitching 
simplicity and ease. In the precise and chiselled elegance of 
his diction the excellence of his work is surpassed by none, 
and is approximated by no modern lyric bard in our language 
with the possible exception of Thomas Gray, while the charm- 
ing urbanity and flowing sweetness of his mild ironic humor 
find no modern counterpart save in the essays of Joseph 
Addison and Montaigne. A great author, in relation to his 
readers, may be viewed as master, mentor or companion. 
Horace has been the loved companion of educated men for 
twenty centuries. In the philosophy of amicability he stands 



HORACE 47 

without a peer. His striking features are humanness and 
modernity. Always he is the speaking friend at elbow, varying 
quip and jest with solemn admonition, and, even when sad, 
smiling through his tears, helping and hoping, but never 
moping, along the byways of life. 

Do you remember his simple prayer? 

"Son of Latona, grant me a sound mind in a sound body, 
that I may enjoy what I possess, and not pass a dishonored 
old age without the innocent pleasures of music!" 

Much of his pholosophy, we cannot doubt, he drew from 
the simple life of his Sabine farm, the gift of his friend Mae- 
cenas. Here, in his sylvan retreat, secure from the tumult of 
the busy capital, he. learned to worship the "golden mean." 
Hear him: 

"The man who loves the golden mean is safe from the 
misery of a wretched hovel, and, moderate in his desires, 
cares not for a luxurious palace, the subject of envy. The 
tall pine bends oftener to the rude blast; lofty towers fall with 
a heavier crash, and the lightnings strike more frequently the 
tops of the mountains. A well-balanced mind hopes for a 
change when the world frowns, and fears its approach when 
it smiles. It is the same divine being that brings back and 
sends away the gloom of winter. Though sorrow may brood 
over thee just now, a change may ere long await thee. At 
times Apollo tunes his silent lyre, and is not always bending 
his bow. Be of good cheer and firm in the hour of adversity, 
and when a more favorable gale is blowing, thou wilt do 
wisely to be furling thy swelling sail." Again: 

"The man caught by a storm in the wide Aegean, when 
the moon is hid by dark clouds, and no star shines to guide 
him certainly on his way, prays for ease: the Thracian, fierce 
in battle, prays for ease: the quivered Parthians pray for 
ease — a blessing not to be bought by gems, purple, nor gold. 
Ease is not venal; for it is not treasures, nor yet the enjoy- 
ment of high power, that can still the uneasy tumults of the 



48 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

soul, and drive away the cares that hover round the fretted 
ceilings of the great." 

Like other great minds of the time, Horace saw through 
the tinsel and glitter of Rome in her most glorious day the 
venality that was to destroy her. "What are laws?" he asks; 
"vain without public virtues to enforce them." . 

"Cease to admire the smoke, riches and din of Rome!" 
he exclaims. 

"The age of our parents," he writes, "worse than that of 
our grandsires, has brought us forth more impious still, and 
we shall produce more vicious progeny." 

Horace is peculiarly the poet of friendship. Only a true 
friend could say this: "He who backbites an absent friend, 
who does not defend him when he is attacked, who seeks 
eagerly to raise the senseless laugh and acquire the fame of 
wit, who can invent an imaginary romance, who cannot keep 
a friend's secret; that man is a scoundrel! Mark him, Roman, 
and avoid him." Many are his tributes to his friends. To 
him they were an indispensable condition of life. Nor did 
he long survive those who were dearest to his heart. When 
Virgil and Maecenas died he followed them within a few 
weeks, passing away at the age of fifty-seven; having, as he 
said of his own work, "rafsed a monument more lasting then 
brazen statues, and higher than the royal pyramids, a monu- 
ment which shall not be destroyed by the wasting rain, the 
fury of the north wind, by a countless series of years or the 
flight of ages." 

III. 

VIRGIL. 

P. Virgilius Maro, born seventy years before the Christian 
era, was, after Homer, the greatest epic poet of antiquity. 
He died September 22, B. C. 19, in the fifty-second year of 
his age. 



VIRGIL 49 

Virgil, the farmer poet, was not only a man of finished 
education, but was deeply learned in agriculture. Like 
Horace, his contemporary and friend, his estates were con- 
fiscated because of his early opposition to the cause of Augustus 
Caesar, and, like Horace, he received both pardon and patron- 
age from the emperor. Virgil's first public employment was 
in connection with the royal stables, because of his skill in 
the cure of diseases among horses. However, his literary 
genius did not remain long inactive, and he soon began the 
composition of his Eclogues, which created a literary sensa- 
tion in Rome. It is in this work that the well-known phrase 
occurs, "Love conquers all things." 

So great was the poet's popularity following this publica- 
tion that, when some of his verses were quoted on the stage, 
and Virgil happened to be present, the entire audience rose, 
thus according to him an honor which Roman audiences 
gave to none but Caesar. 

The advice of Maecenas and the astounding success of 
his pastoral poems (a field which had not been theretofore 
attempted by any of the Roman poets) led him to next 
undertake the "Georgics," an agricultural poem which defies 
imitation. The first book of the "Georgics" deals with soil 
management, the second with tree-culture, the third with 
live stock and the fourth with bee-keeping. This is conceded 
to be the most finished poem in the Latin language. In 
the opinion of Addison it is the most finished poem in exist- 
ence, every detail being subjected to the most exquisite polish, 
and refined and embellished to the last degree. "The com- 
monest precepts of farming," in the language of one critic, 
"are delivered with an elegance which could scarcely be 
attained by a poet who should endeavor to clothe in verse the 
sublimest maxims of philosophy." The famous motto, "Labor 
omnia vincent — Labor conquers all" — is taken from this 
poem. 

Virgil was in his forty-fifth year when he completed 



50 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

the Georgics, to which he had devoted seven years of pain- 
staking effort. He now began the "Aeneid," his last and 
greatest work, which was to occupy the remainder of his 
days; an epic poem portraying the wanderings of Aeneis, 
bringing Homer's Iliad down to Roman times, and tracing the 
Roman lineage to the Trojans, an achievement highly flattering 
to imperial Rome, and intensely pleasing to the Roman 
populace. In this great poem Virgil brought the hexameter 
verse, "the stateliest measure ever molded by the lips of 
man," to its utmost perfection. The majesty and force of 
Virgil's swinging line have echoed down the ages, and will 
reverberate till time shall be no more. The martial tread, 
the onward sweep, the epic grandeur of the work, are fore- 
shadowed in the very first sentence: 

"Arms and the man I sing, who, forced by Fate, 
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate, 
Expelled and exiled, left the Trojan shore." 

But, with all its wondrous power, with all its beauty and 
its force, the Aeneid was not perfect, and none knew it so 
well as Virgil. His keenly sensitive taste was only too con- 
scious of the defects of the piece. He was subjecting the 
work to a most critical revision when death ended his labors. 
Deeply sensible of its imperfections, his last request was that 
the Aeneid be destroyed; but his will was thwarted by the 
emperor Augustus. 

Shortly before his death Virgil met the emperor at 
Athens. Augustus was returning from his Syrian conquests. 
He had vanquished his domestic enemies, and was lord of the 
known world. At this time he was considering the restoration 
of the Roman republic. Agrippa favored the idea; but 
Maecenas was for the empire. The decision, one of the most 
momentous in human history, was left to the poet. He 
declared for the empire, and Augustus followed his advice. 

Virgil, though a deep scholar, was unpretentious in his 
manner. He dressed and looked like a farmer. He was 



LUCAN 51 

modest to the point of timidity. He shunned publicity, and 
was visibly embarrassed by praise. Although the habit of 
mutual attack and recrimination was common enough among 
Roman writers of the time, they appear to have been unani- 
mous in their esteem for Virgil, and his rise to fame was 
attended by very little of the jealousy that is frequently 
engendered upon such occasions. He was never in love and 
was never married. His private life was as beautiful and 
chaste as the lines he wrote. But he does not, in any of his 
poems, depict the character of one good woman. 

In one particular the fame of Virgil will forever remain 
unique among the world's great poets. A superstitious 
reverence has encircled his name. For hundreds of years he 
was regarded as a kind of supernatural being, endowned with 
magic power and wisdom. There was long prevalent a tradi- 
tion that his mother was a virgin. For centuries there was a 
custom of "telling one's fortune" by opening the "Aeneid" 
and noting the first line to meet the eye. Petrarch was once 
regarded as a sorcerer because of his familiarity with Virgil. 
In the middle ages it was attempted to be shown, from the 
Eclogues, that Virgil predicted the coming of Christ. In 
ancient times pilgrimages were made to his tomb, and his 
image was set up in the heathen temples of Rome. 



IV. 
LUCAN. 



After Homer and Virgil, the next great epic poet of 
ancient times is Lucan. This is the opinion of no less dis- 
tinguished a critic than Dr. Hugh Blair, the prince of English 
rhetoricians. The same authority assures us, moreover, that 
Lucan was the most philosophical and the most public- 
spirited poet of all antiquity. These opinions, it is believed, 
fairly reflect the judgment of modern criticism, notwith- 



52 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

standing the particular faults pointed out by the German 
savant, Dr. Niebuhr, by Dr. Blair and others. 

Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus), the principal Roman 
poet of the so-called "Silver Age," was born in Spain, 38 A. D., 
where his father had amassed a fortune as a farmer of the 
Roman revenues. The elder Lucan was a younger brother of 
Seneca, the philosopher. The poet in his infancy was brought 
to Rome, where he became a schoolmate of Persius, and a 
friend of Emperor Nero. Brought up in an atmosphere of 
culture, surrounded by the opportunities of boundless wealth 
and the refinements of social position, put forth by genius and 
upheld by power, Lucan entered with zest and promise upon 
the brilliant career which the Roman capital offered to men 
of his type and talent. A favorite of the emperor, he ad- 
vanced quickly in the public service. He became quaestor 
and augur. A man of popular manners and a poet of great 
power, he rose rapidly in the public esteem. His public 
recitations and declamations met with increasingly great 
applause. His fame aroused the envy of Nero, and the 
emperor's vindictive jealousy soon made his condition so 
intolerable that he joined in a plot against the tyrant's life. 
He was discovered, and ordered to his death, at the age of 
twenty-seven, after vainly seeking to exculpate himself by 
the infamy of a cowardly confession, implicating his mother 
in the plot. 

Strange it was, but true, that Lucan, child of luxury and 
habitue of the court of Nero, should become a lover of liberty 
and a champion of democracy. Yet such he was. 

The "Pharsalia," a poem in ten books, is the only work 
of his now extant. That work is an epic of democracy, and 
will forever remain a part of the well remembered literature of 
the world. It narrates in epic form the civil wars of Pompey 
and Caesar, and recounts the overthrow of Roman liberty. 
It was the hostility to Caesarism displayed in this book 
which, in all probability, first drew forth the ire of Nero. 



OVID 53 

The poem has been a favorite with the lovers of political 
freedom in all succeeding ages. It was especially popular with 
the republicans of Europe during the "Age of Revolutions." 
Some of the speeches of Cato, particularly, in this poem, for 
moral sublimity are unsurpassed in the annals of antiquity. 

Lucan lacks tenderness and is deficient in elegance and 
purity of style, when compared with Virgil; nor is the epic 
structure of his work to be compared with that great master; 
but the stoic philosophy that breathes through the poem, 
the nobility of sentiment and the glowing fires of freedom 
that gleam throughout the piece will hold its fame secure. 
Some of his epigrams are most striking, as when he says , in 
book V, 'Those whom guilt stains it equals;" or, in book VII, 
" Neither side is guiltless if its adversary is appointed judge." 
His saying that 'The chieftains contend only for their places 
of burial" suggests the line of Gray: 

"The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 
Another of his famous aphorisms is this: "He who rules will 
ever be impatient of a partner." His keen insight into the 
origin of popular upheavals may be shown by a single line: 
"For it is famine alone that confers freedom on cities; a 
starving populace knows no fear." And likewise, in book I, 
where he says: "He who refuses what is just, gives up every- 
thing to him who is armed." 



V. 
OVID. 



One of the great poets of the time of Augustus was Ovid 
(Publius Ovidius Naso) who lived contemporaneously with 
Livy, Horace and Virgil. He was born B. C. 43, and died 
A. D. 18. 

Ovid was of an ancient equestrian family, and like other 
young Roman nobles of the time he finished his education at 
Athens. He was trained for the bar, but the pursuits of 



54 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

literature early engrossed his attention, and he is not known 
to have practiced law. Unlike his great contemporaries in 
literature, he led a profligate life. He was divorced twice and 
married three times before his thirtieth year. At one time 
he numbered the Emperor Augustus among his personal 
friends; but, because of his licentious practices he was ban- 
ished from Rome in the fiftieth year of his age, in the same 
year that Horace died. The seat of his exile was the little 
town of Tomi near the mouth of the Danube, on the Black 
sea, where he spent the remaining ten years of his life. He 
appears to have so conducted himself as to win the sincere 
love of the people of Tomi. 

A number of beautiful poems were written during the 
period of his exile (among them the Epistolae Ex Ponto and 
the Tristium) which generally bewail his banishment and 
entreat the mercies of Augustus, but to all such appeals the 
emperor remained obdurate. The precise reason for the 
poet's exile may never be known. The cause specified was 
the publication of the "Ars Amatoria;" but this was merely a 
specious pretext, because the poem complained of had been 
published ten years before and had been in general circulation 
ever since. Historians have therefore indulged the plausible 
conjecture that Augustus took personal offense at some of the 
licentious acts of the poet, although many of the love poems 
of Ovid were by no means calculated to improve the moral 
status of a none too decorous public. 

The poet seems to have realized his own moral instability. 
He was weak, and he paid the price. How truly he exclaimed, 
in the greatest of his poems: 

"I see the right, and I approve it, too, 
Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue." 

And again, in the same poem: 

"111 habits gather by unseen degrees, 

As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas." 



OVID 55 

From Tomi he wrote: ''An evil life is a kind of death." 
Well did Ovid know it! And none knew better than he the 
beginnings of evil. "Resist beginnings," he urges; "it is too 
late to employ medicine when the evil has grown strong by 
inveterate habit." He was of a kindly and considerate 
nature. Most truly did he say: "I have lampooned no one 
in satirical verse, nor do my poems hold up any one to ridi- 
cule." He was, indeed, an enemy to none but himself. 

Not all of Ovid's work has come down to us. "Medea," 
a tragedy which appears to have been very popular, is wholly 
lost. Other works have survived in whole or in part. Among 
the complete works he has left us is his greatest, the "Met- 
amorphoses." This poem, in fifteen books, was one of his 
later works. It is a literary masterpiece, well worthy of the 
golden age of Roman literature. The poet appears to have 
been fully conscious of its merit; and, like Virgil and Horace 
upon similar occasions, he does not hesitate to say so. At 
the close of the fifteenth book he exclaims: "And now I have 
finished a work which neither the wrath of Jove, nor fire, nor 
steel, nor all-consuming time can destroy. Welcome the day 
which can destroy only my physical man in ending my un- 
certain life! In my better part I shall be raised to immortality 
above the lofty stars, and my name shall never die." 

Ovid was an early favorite in English literature. Christo- 
pher Marlowe translated the "Amores." The "Ars Amatoria" 
was done into English verse by Congreve and Dryden. Both 
Dryden and Addison translated the "Metamorphoses." 
The critics are all agreed that much of Ovid was known to 
Shakespeare. There are allusions to Ovid in "Much Ado 
About Nothing," 11:7; "As You Like It," 111:3; "Taming of 
the Shrew," i:I; lb. iii:I; "Titus Andronicus," iv:l; "Love's 
Labor's Lost," iv:2; "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "The 
Tempest," iv:7; and "Venus and Adonis." Shakespeare was 
certainly familiar with Golding's translation of the "Metamor- 
phoses," printed in 1567. Old father Chaucer, too, was 



56 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

familiar with the Roman poet, as witness this opening line 
from a verse in the "Merchant's Tale:" 

"O noble Ovide, soth sayest thou, God wot," etc., 

Ovid's pleasing style, his felicity of expression and facility 
of execution render his compositions most delightful to 
lovers of light and musical verse, while we find in him the 
origin of many common phrases, such as piling "Ossa on 
Pelion," "agreeing to differ," "a pious fraud," "pursuits 
become habits," "no excellence without effort," etc. Some 
of his sayings became axiomatic, as: 

"We covet what is guarded; the very care invokes the 
thief. Few love what they can have." 

"We are always striving for things forbidden, and coveting 
those denied us." 

"It is the mind that makes the man, and our vigor is in 
our immortal spirit." 

"God gave man an upright countenance to survey the 
heavens, and look upward to the stars." 

Ovid passed away one year before the death of Virgil. 



VI. 

LUCRETIUS. 



Titus Carus Lucretius, probably the greatest didactic 
poet the world has ever known, was born B. C. 95, and died 
in the middle of the first century B. C. The exact date of 
his birth is conjectural, and little is known of his life, but his 
great work, "De Rerum Natura," a philosophic poem in six 
books, will live so long as the human voice finds utterance 
for the language of philosophy, and in its benign consolations 
the human heart finds peace. 

The purpose of his poem is to vindicate the freedom of 
thought, and free the human mind from the dominion of 
superstition; a truly noble object, and magnificently essayed, 



LUCRETIUS 57 

even if hardly attained. In this great work, which is done in 
hexameter verse, the serene contemplations of the philosopher 
are adorned with an elegance of diction and a sweetness and 
harmony of numbers unsurpassed in the poetry of any lan- 
guage. 

In philosophy, Lucretius was a disciple of Epicurus. 
His work has been reviewed by many of the first minds of 
England, Germany and France. Tennyson made him the 
subject of a poem. "Lucretius was an earnest seeker after 
truth," says one, "but it was the spirit of the typical Roman, 
for a definite practical end, the emancipation of mankind from 

the bondage of superstition The enduring interest 

of the poem is thus a psychological one, and is due to the 
unconscious self-portrayal of one of the noblest minds in 
history." There are traditions of the poet's madness, his 
death by suicide, etc., but these tales are unsupported by 
historic testimony. 

While no translation can adequately present the statu- 
esque dignity of his superb Latin, the following excerpts will 
in a measure suffice to illustrate his charm of thought and 
expression : 

11 'Tis sweet, when the seas are roughened by violent 
winds, to view on land the toils of others, not that there is 
pleasure in seeing others in distress, but because man is glad 
to know himself secure. 'Tis pleasant, too, to look, with no 
share of peril, on the mighty contests of war; but nothing is 
sweeter than to reach those calm, unruffled temples, raised by 
the wisdom of philosophers, whence thou mayest look down 
on poor mistaken mortals, wandering up and down in life's 
devious ways, some resting their fame on genius, or priding 
themselves on birth, day and night toiling anxiously to rise 
to high fortune and sovereign power." 

One cannot but recall the same thought carried out by 
Milton in his "Comus:" 



58 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

"How charming is divine philosophy! 

Not harsh and crabb'd, as dull fools suppose; 

But musical as is Apollo's lute, 

And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, 

Where no rude surfeit reigns." 

Let us read further: "Why is it, O man, that thou 
indulgest in excessive grief? Why shed tears that thou must 
die? For if thy past life has been one of enjoyment and if 
all thy pleasures have not passed through thy mind as through 
a sieve, and vanished, leaving not a rack behind, why then 
dost thou not, like a thankful guest, rise cheerfully from life's 
feast, and with a quiet mind go take thy rest." 

Lucretius never ceases to exhort against the fear of 
death. "Wilt thou then repine," he asks, "and think it a 
hardship to die? thou for whom life is well nigh dead even 
while thou livest and enjoyest the light of day, who wearest 
away the greater part of thy time in sleep, who snorest waking, 
and ceasest not to see visions, and bearest about with thee 
a mind troubled with groundless terrors, and canst not dis- 
cover the cause of thy never-ending troubles, when, stagger- 
ing, thou art oppressed on all sides with a multitude of cares, 
and reelest rudderless in unsettled thoughts." 

"O misery of men!" he exclaims. "O blinded fools! in 
what dark mazes, in what dangers we walk this little journey 
of our life!" 

"How wretched are the minds of men, and how blind 
their understanding!" 

One more sentence — and one to be remembered, too — 
and we take our leave of this wizard of Latinity: "Examine 
with judgment each opinion: If it seems true, embrace it; 
if false, gird up the loins of thy mind to withstand it." 



PLAUTUS 59 

VII. 

PLAUTUS. 

T. Maccius Plautus was born 254 B. C. and died after 
an active life of seventy years. He was the greatest writer of 
comedy the Latin language has given to the world. 

The early life of Plautus was filled with hardships. At 
the age of thirty we find him earning a living by turning a 
hand-mill, grinding corn for a baker! But he was soon to 
furnish to the Romans bread of a different sort. In his leisure 
moments he composed three plays and they were instantly 
successful. The remainder of his life was devoted to producing 
for the stage. He is thought to have been the author of one 
hundred and thirty plays, only twenty of which have been 
transmitted to posterity. 

The plays of Plautus are distinguished for their rapid 
action, their humor and their vivacity. His popularity with 
the ancient Romans was unbounded and his plays held un- 
disputed possession of the Roman stage for a period of five 
hundred years — a longer period of popularity than the fates 
have vouchsafed to any other playwright in the entire course 
of human history. Although some of his plots were adapted 
from the Greek of Menander, his portrayal of Roman life, 
and of human nature, was so true as to elicit instantaneous 
and continuous appreciation, and his work has found imita- 
tors among the moderns in Shakespeare, Dryden, Addison, 
Lessing, Camoens and Moliere. Dryden, Camoens and 
Moliere copied his Amphytrion. That Plautus was known 
to Shakespeare is evident from the specific mention of the 
Roman poet, in Hamlet. 

The writings of Plautus abound in more or less delicate 
but incisive thrusts at human folly, frailty and fraud. Some 
of his sayings have become axiomatic, and many a well 
known phrase finds its origin in his plays. In the fourth act 
of his Trinummus he speaks of young men "sowing their wild 



60 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

oats." In the same play we find (Act IV): "The bell never 
rings of itself; unless some one handles or moves it, it is 
dumb." In the second act of this play we find: "He who 
falls in love meets a worse fate than he who leaps from a rock." 

From the Mostellaria we glean: "You little know what a 
ticklish thing it is to go to law" (Act V) ; "To blow and swallow 
at the same moment is not easy to be done" (Act III); and 
"Things which you don't hope happen more frequently than 
things which you do hope" (Act I). 

"He whom the gods love dies young," is from his Bac- 
chides, Act IV., but is borrowed from the Greek comic poet, 
Menander. 

"Ill gotten is ill spent" is from Poenulus (Act IV), and 
in the same play (Act III) we find the aphorism: "He who 
does not know his way to the sea should take a river for his 
guide." 

In Pseudolus he excoriates, in this fashion, the gossip and 
the slanderer: 

Act I: "Your tittle-tattlers, and those who listen to 
slander, by my good will should all be hanged — the former by 
their tongues, the latter by their ears." 

Act II : "Do you never look at yourself when you abuse 
another?" 

The same thought is pursued in his Truculentus (Act I): 
"Those who twit others with their faults should look at home." 

In his Persa the author strikes at ingratitude: "That 
man is worthless who knows how to receive a favor, but not 
how to return one" (Act V). "You love a nothing when you 
love an ingrate" (Act II). 

In Trinummus (Act IV) he says: "What you lend is 
lost; when you ask for it back you may find a friend made 
an enemy by your kindness. If you begin to press him further, 
you have the choice of two things — either to lose your loan 
or to lose your friend." Shakespeare, who may have gotten 



MARCUS AURELIUS 61 

here the thought, improved the expression in Polonius' 
advice to Laertes (Hamlet, Act I, Sc. Ill): 

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be: 
For loan oft loses both itself and friend, 
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry." 

Plautus wrote his own epitaph, and it is worthy of 
reproduction as one of the truest thoughts that ever fell 
from his gifted pen: "Plautus has prepared himself for a life 
beyond the grave; the comic stage deserted weeps; laughter 
also, and jest and joke; and poetic and prosaic will bewail his 
loss together." 

VIII. 

MARCUS AURELIUS. 

The pages of history record the name of but one emperor 
who was a gentleman as well as a king and who was likewise 
in all things an honest, upright and useful citizen, a profound 
student, a conscientious and diligent administrator of public 
affairs, and a man of blameless life. That man was the 
Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who was born 
A. D. 121, and died in 180. 

It was Plato who wrote, in his "Ideal Republic:" "Until 
philosophers are kings, and the princes of this world have the 
spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and 
wisdom meet in one, cities will never cease from ill — no, nor 
the human race, as I believe, and then only will our state have 
a possibility of life, and see the light of day. * * * The truth 
is that the state in which the rulers are most reluctant to 
govern is best and most quietly governed, and the state in 
which they are most willing is the worst." 

All these conditions were met by Marcus Aurelius, and 
by no other person in the entire history of the world. He 
loved wisdom for its own sake, and found virtue to be its 



62 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

own reward. He was humble in high station; a statesman 
who detested politics; a soldier who despised the glamour of 
militarism and loathed its bloody trophies; a monarch who 
scorned the trappings of empire, and who preserved to the 
last the candor of innocence, and the simplicity and gentleness 
of a child's heart. 

But he was born to troublous times. His life was filled 
with action. He knew no peace during his reign of twenty 
years. The empire was assaulted upon the east, the west and 
the north, and torn by rebellion within. Famine, pestilence, 
earthquakes and floods added their terrors. Marcus Aurelius 
had little time for the studies he loved so well ; but he acted 
the philosophy he professed, he practiced the precepts he 
gave, and he surmounted every obstacle and weathered every 
storm. Through all these manifold disasters he moved with 
the sweetness of an angelic spirit and the serene majesty of a 
master mind. When a trusted general revolted and was slain 
by subordinates, the philosopher-king lamented the fact that 
the Fates had denied him his fondest wish — to have freely par- 
doned the man who had so basely betrayed his confidence; 
and then he caused all the correspondence of the rebel to be 
destroyed, in order that others might not be implicated in 
the treason. He was, in very truth, most blessed of Pagans, 
and noblest of the Stoics. He was, at once, a king among 
philosophers and a philosopher among kings. Well may they 
decry power and riches who possess them not. But, to possess 
absolute power, yet temper justice with mercy; to possess 
unlimited wealth, and yet lead an abstemious life, active in 
every benevolent work — this is a test of character. How 
many Christian monarchs are worthy to sit beside him? 

It has been remarked that his persecution of the Chris- 
tians is the one blot upon his fame, the stigma of his reign. 
It will, we apprehend, be time enough to rebuke the Pagan 
emperor for this when Christians cease their persecution of 
one another. Just here, however, is a lesson for the present 



MARCUS AURELIUS 63 

generation. Let it be voiced in the words of John Stuart 
Mill: ''Unless anyone who approves of punishment for the 
promulgation of opinions flatters himself that he is a wiser 
and better man than Marcus Aurelius — more deeply versed in 
wisdom of his time — more elevated in his intellect above it — 
more earnest in his search for truth — let him abstain from 
that assumption of the joint multitude which the great 
Antoninus made with so unfortunate a result." 

Marcus Aurelius wrote but one book — his "Medita- 
tions" — and it may be doubted if even this was ever intended 
for publication. However, in the brief scope of this small 
volume we find the full fruition of the Stoical school of philoso- 
phy, "the gospel of those who do not believe in the super- 
natural." The fundamentals of that system of thought, long 
since exploded, need not be here discussed. But for all that 
the little volume of "Meditations" has given strength to 
many. It is one of the most delightful of the Roman classics, 
and in its pages we may readily discern the friend of man. 
Thus, in book II: 

"And since it has fallen to my share to understand the 
natural beauty of a good action and the deformity of an ill 
one; since I am satisfied the person disobliging is of kin to 
me, and though we are not just of the same flesh and blood, 
yet our minds are nearly related, both being extracted from 
the Deity, I am convinced that no man can do me a real 
injury, because no man can force me to misbehave myself; 
nor can I find it in my heart to hate or be angry with one of 
my own nature and family. For we are all made for mutual 
assistance, as the feet, the hands and the eyelids; as the rows 
of the upper and under teeth." 

Many of his maxims should be treasured in the memory 
of the remotest posterity. There is, for example, no sounder 
doctrine than this: 

"He that commits a fault abroad is a trespasser at home; 
and he that injures his neighbor hurts himself." 



64 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

"Nothing," he says elsewhere, "is more scandalous than 
false friendship, and therefore, of all things, avoid it. In 
short, a man of integrity, sincerity and good nature can never 
be concealed, for his character is wrought into his counte- 
nance." 

The guiding principle of his life is summed up at the end 
of book IX, where, speaking of a good man, he says: 

"And therefore, when he does a good office, and proves 
serviceable to the world, he has fulfilled the end of his being, 
and attains his own reward." 



IX. 
SALLUST. 

Caius Sallustius Crispus, "the Roman Thucydides," was 
a Sabine, and his birthplace was Amiternum, at the foot of 
the Appenines, where he first saw the light B. C. 86. He was 
one of the greatest of the Roman politicians, and was from 
the beginning a warm friend and advocate of Julius Caesar. 

Sallust was elected a tribune of the people when he was 
thirty-two years of age. From this time forward his influence 
was very great, but his character was so wretched that two 
years later he was removed from the Senate on account of 
gross immorality. He was out of office for four years, when 
through the influence of Caesar he was restored to his posi- 
tion. To all the schemes of that great political and military 
genius Sallust was a party, and he went with Caesar to Africa 
in the military campaign against the party of Pompey. 
Having participated in that victorious campaign, which 
resulted in the total ruin of the Pompeian party and the suicide 
of Cato, Caesar made him governor of an African province. 
He returned a very rich man. He then devoted the remainder 
of his life to literature, and died B. C. 34. 

The only works of Sallust that have come down to us 
are his two Epistles to Caesar, his history of the Jugurthine 



SALLUST 65 

war, and his History of the Conspiracy of Catiline. Another 
book, in the nature of a chronicle of the events of his time, 
and said to have been in five volumes, has been lost. 

Although the remnants of his writings that have sur- 
vived are all too brief, yet he is regarded as one of the foremost 
of ancient historians. One of his translators, the learned Dr. 
Stewart, says of this extraordinary character: 

"Perhaps there is no literary character that has given 
rise to keener sensations of aversion or partiality than that of 
Sallust; no one has met with less protection from his friends, 
or greater persecution from his enemies. The earliest biog- 
raphers, who attempted to represent him, lived in too near 
an age to be free from personal prepossessions; and of the 
later authors the far greater number have surrendered their 
judgment to the dogmatical and the arrogant; they have 
rather listened to declamation than inquired into facts, and 
have thereby been disabled from deciding with candor. As 
to Sallust, while alive, he was exposed to the hatred of Cicero, 
and the envy of Livy, and vilely traduced and undervalued by 
the latter, when he was no longer able to answer for himself. 
Even down to the present day his reputation is still mangled 
by the heated partisans of these popular writers." 

But, whatever may have been Livy's opinions of his 
character, there is no doubt that he emulated the style of 
Sallust, who was the first of the Roman historians to adopt 
the rhetorical method of the Greeks. Some of the passages 
in Sallust are of great beauty; as this, upon the mind: 

"Personal beauty, great riches, strength of body, and 
all other things of this kind, pass away in a short time; but 
the noble productions of the mind, like the soul itself, are 
immortal. In fine, as there is a beginning, so there is an 
end of the advantages of person and fortune; all things that 
rise must set, and those that have grown must fade away; 
but the mind is incorruptible, eternal, the governor of the 



66 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

human race, directs and controls all things, overrules all 
things, nor is itself under the power of any." 

The following sound political axiom also comes down to 
us from Sallust: 

"It is better for a good man to be overcome by his oppo- 
nents than to conquer injustice by unlawful means." This, 
from a partisan of Caesar! 

But, in the whole range of the classics, there is nothing 
finer than this, from his First Epistle to Caesar, although, 
mayhap, it came from one who knew too well its truth: 

"There is yet," said he, "another species of reform still 
more important, namely, to eradicate from the mind the 
love of money; or, if that cannot be, to diminish as far as 
possible its baneful influence. Without such a reform, what 
degree of prosperity can be enjoyed by a people, either at 
home or abroad, in private life or in public transactions? 
Where riches are idolized, the manners must be corrupted, 
the nerves of discipline relaxed, and no propitiousness of 
disposition can resist the allurement. Even the mind itself 
must forget its powers, and, sooner or later, sink into in- 
activity. In the pages of history we may perceive events 
sufficiently demonstrative of this pernicious passion; states 
and kingdoms, that when depraved by wealth, have lost the 
mighty empires acquired during the age of poverty and 
virtue. Nor, if we attend to its progress, will such extent of 
its power create astonishment. The good man, when he 
sees virtue condemned, and vice, if possessed of wealth, 
approached with deference and honored with distinction, at 
first indignantly resents the preference and many a bitter 
reflection arises in his mind. But by degrees, the splendor of 
rank dazzles his fancy, and the pleasures of riches gain ad- 
mission to his heart; until he sinks, at last, into the common 
corruption. Where riches are worshipped, honor, good faith, 
probity, modesty and principle of every sort are held as 
light in the balance: For there is but one path which leads to 



QUINTILIAN 67 

virtue, and that is difficult and rugged; whereas to wealth 
there are a thousand, ever open, and at the choice of its 
votaries. I beseech you, therefore, let your first care be to 
lower riches in the common estimation. Let the high offices 
of Consul and Praetor be once bestowed on real dignity, and 
distinguished talents, not on superiority of fortune, and the 
possession of the latter will no longer have power to exalt, 
or to depress, in the opinion of the world." 



X. 

QUINTILIAN. 

Quintilian — the school-master, the first to draw a salary 
from the Roman state; for, before his time, teaching was done 
by private instructors. The emperor Domitian established 
for him a professorship and awarded to him a handsome 
salary from the imperial treasury. Assuredly, none was more 
worthy of either the honor or the emolument. 

Marcus Fabius Quintilian was born in Spain, in the year 
40 A. D., and lived to the age of seventy-eigh^t. He began 
as advocate, but soon abandoned the bar for his favorite 
vocation of teaching, which he followed the greater part of 
his life, instructing the youth in the arts of speech. Martial 
called him "the supreme controller of the restless youth." 
The younger Pliny and two grand nephews of the emperor 
Domitian were among his pupils. In him ancient literary 
criticism reached its highest pitch of excellence, and he has 
been a guide to the rhetoricians and orators of all succeeding 
ages. His reviews are always very fine, and his judgments 
usually just. Some of his characterizations are very pretty; 
as when he speaks of how "Horace soars now and then, and 
is full of sweetness and grace, and in his varied forms and 
phrases is most fortunately bold;" or "the immortal swiftness 
of Sallust," or "the milky richness of Livy;" always, indeed, 



68 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

showing a sensitive appreciation and accurate judgment of 
the merits of any author whom he touches. His great work is 
a complete treatise upon the subject of rhetoric, in twelve 
books, entitled "De Institutiones Oratoris." 

That he understood the nature of youth and was qualified 
to teach is evident from some of his maxims that have come 
down to us, of which the following are a few: 

"Give me a boy who rouses when he is praised, who 
profits when he is encouraged, and who cries when he is 
defeated. Such a boy will be fired by ambition; he will be 
stung by reproach, and animated by preference; never shall I 
apprehend any bad consequences from idleness in such a 
boy." 

"By nature we are very tenacious of what we imbibe in 
the dawn of life, in the same manner as new vessels retain the 
flavor which they first drink in. There is no recovering wool 
to its native whiteness after it is dyed." 

"Our minds are like our stomachs; they are whetted by 
the change of food, and variety supplies both with fresh 
appetite." 

"I have no great opinion of any boy's capacity whose aim 
is to raise a laugh by his talent of mimicry." 

Quintilian is in accord with the most advanced educa- 
tional authorities of the present day on the subject of corporal 
punishment. That he did not believe that to spare the rod 
was to spoil the child, is evident from the following para- 
graph: 

"I am by no means for whipping boys who are learning — 
in the first place, because the practice is unseemly and slavish ; 
and in the next place, if the boy's genius is so dull as to be 
proof against reproach, he will, like a worthless slave, become 
likewise insensible to blows." 

He was a believer, also, in that great educational truth 
which is expressed in the homely adage: "You can't make a 
silk purse out of a sow's ear," for he says: 



QUINTILIAN 69 

"One thing, however, I must promise, that without the 
assistance of natural capacity, rules and precepts are of no 
efficacy." 

As a teacher of eloquence he lays down the following 
fundamental principle: 

"Now, according to my definition, no man can be a 
complete orator unless he is a good man. It is the heart and 
mental energy that inspires eloquence." 

The following, upon the same subject, is fine: 

"Brilliant thoughts are, I consider, as it were, the eyes of 
eloquence; but I would not that the body were all eyes, lest 
the other members should lose their proper functions." 

And this: 

"But give me the reader who figures in his mind the idea 
of eloquence, all divine as she is; who, with Euripides, gazes 
upon her all-subduing charms; who seeks not his reward from 
the venal fee for his voice, but from that reflection, that 
imagination, that perfection of mind which time cannot 
destroy nor fortune affect." How like the noble sentiment 
attributed to our own Rufus Choate, that "He does not truly 
succeed as an advocate who practices his profession with an 
eye single to the golden fee." 

In the usage of language he proclaims the cardinal rule 
that "The common usage of learned men, however, is the 
surest director of speaking; and language, like money, when 
it receives the public stamp, ought to have currency." Which 
suggests the oft-quoted lines of Pope: 

"In words as in fashions, the same rule will hold, 
Alike too fantastic if too new or old ; 
Be not the first by whom the new are tried, 
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside." 
The following are among the characteristic sayings of 
Quintilian: 

"Things forbidden alone are loved immoderately; when 
they may be enjoyed they do not excite the desire." 



70 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

"Though ambition in itself is a vice, it is yet often the 
parent of virtue." 

"Virtue, although she in some measure receives her 
beginning from nature, yet gets her finishing excellencies from 
learning." 

"Nature has formed us with honest inclinations, and 
when we are so inclined, it is so very easy to be virtuous 
that, if we seriously reflect, nothing is more astonishing than 
to see so many wicked." 

"Cultivate innocence, and think not that your deeds, 
because they are concealed, will be unpunished; you have 
committed them under the canopy of heaven — there is a 
more powerful witness." 



PART THREE 

GREAT ITALIAN AUTHORS 



I. Dante. 

II. Petrarch. 

III. Boccaccio. 

IV. Tasso. 
V. Ariosto. 

VI. BOIARDO. 

VII. Michelangelo. 

VIII. Machiavelli. 

IX. Metastasio. 

X. Alfieri. 



(71) 



Italy is still the privileged land of nature and humanity; 
and the manly pith of its great ages is neither degenerated 
nor dried up. Involved, by the irresistible fall of the old 
world, in the decay of the universal empire she had founded, 
no nation upon earth has withstood so long a period of dep- 
osition without debasement and dissolution. Her glory, her 
religion, her genius, her name, her language, her monuments 
and her arts, have continued to reign after the fall of her 
fortune. She alone has not had an age of civil darkness after 
her age of military dominion. She has subjected the barba- 
rians who conquered her to her worship, her laws, and her 
civilization. While profaning, they submitted to her; though 
conquerors, they humbly besought her for laws, manners and 
religion. Nearly the whole continent is nothing but an intel- 
lectual, moral and religious colony of this mother country of 
Europe, Asia and Africa. * * * War, policy, literature, com- 
merce, arts, navigation, manufactures, diplomacy, all emana- 
ted from Italy. Her names resemble those eternal dynasties 
on which the supremacy, in every region of the human mind, 
has been devolved by nature, and of which such men as Sixtus 
V., Leo X., Cosmo, Tasso, Dante, Machiavel, Michael 
Angelo, Raphael, Petrarch, Galileo, Doria, and Christopher 
Columbus, transmit to each other, even at this day, the 
scepter that no other nation could snatch from their privi- 
leged race. 

— Lamartine. 



( 72) 



DANTE 73 

I. 

DANTE. 

Dante Alighieri, "father of Tuscan literature," and great- 
est of the Italian poets, was born in Florence, in the year 1265, 
and died at Ravenna in the year 1321, aged fifty-six years and 
four months. Aside from the romantic story of his love for 
Beatrice, little of his early life is known. After the marriage 
of Beatrice to another, and her early death, the poet resolved 
that if he lived he would write of her "what had never yet 
been written of any woman." His resolution was magnifi- 
cently carried out in the Divinia Commedia. 

Dante was now past twenty-five years of age. He con- 
soled himself by reading philosophical books, which, he says, 
were read by him with great difficulty. Five or six years 
after the death of Beatrice he married. He reared four 
children. In about the year 1295 Dante enrolled himself 
in the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries. In the year 
1300 he entered politics. Here his miseries began. He was 
an upright and honest citizen, and a zealous and fearless 
advocate of civil and religious liberty. His first public em- 
ployment was upon a diplomatic mission. In the same year 
he was elected to one of the highest offices in the gift of the 
city. But Florence, like the other petty Italian states of 
the time, was badly disrupted by factional strife. The most 
thorough search of historical records has demonstrated, be- 
yond peradventure, that Dante's public life, like his private 
conduct, was at all times honest and clean. Nevertheless, 
while he was away on public business, leaders of a rival faction 
seized the government; and, without arraignment, investiga- 
tion or trial, proceeded to convict Dante of extortion, pecula- 
tion and malversation in office, and levied against him a 
ruinous fine, besides decreeing banishment for two years, 
and perpetual disqualification from office. Dante declined to 
recognize the validity of this iniquitous decree, and a second 



74 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

sentence was pronounced against him ordering him to be 
burned alive. 

Dante remained an exile for the remainder of his life. 
Never again did he set foot upon the soil of his native city. 
But his enemies were never able to capture him and carry out 
their infamous designs against his life. We are unable to 
follow the distressed and persecuted poet in his wanderings, 
but we know that he traveled over Italy seeking to organize 
expeditions for the relief and redemption of his beloved 
Florence from the murderous band of ruffianly marplots who 
had gained control of the city. He visited various cities of 
France. Boccaccio thinks that he visited England and studied 
at Oxford; but there is scant evidence of this. He finally 
settled at Ravenna, where he finished his immortal poem, 
the Divinia Commedia, in one hundred cantos, divided into 
three books, the Inferno, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso. 
The poem is not an epic, and it is not a satire. It defies 
classification in the ordinary categories of verse. It is the 
soul of Dante; as such it stands and weaves its mystic spell. 
The Commedia is published in over three hundred editions, 
in every modern language, and its commentators form a 
library. Dante was unknown to the English-reading public 
until about one hundred years ago, when Carey's translation 
was published, in 1805-6. Even Carey's version (still the 
most popular English translation) languished in obscurity 
for several years, and until 1818, when it was warmly praised 
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in one of his London lectures, 
and as a consequence, the work sprang into immediate pop- 
ularity. 

Soon after his death, when the matchless dream of his 
undying genius was the sensation of the hour, and the world 
of letters was worshipping at the tomb of Dante, his country- 
men began to show every honor to his memory. A public 
lectureship was established to expound his poem, and Boc- 
caccio was the first lecturer. Often in the ages that have since 



DANTE 75 

cast their mantle of oblivion over the wicked generation 
which so shamefully abused their city's noblest son, the 
people of Florence have, without avail, sought to procure from 
Ravenna the ashes of the poet — seeking the poet's ashes, 
when, as Lowell so aptly remarked, if they had caught the 
poet living they would have converted his body into cinders. 
Whereat we cannot but observe, with Byron (Child Harolde, 
iv., St. 57): 

"Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar, 
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore." 

Whether we wander in the hopeless terrors of the Inferno ' 
sense the star-lit beauties of the Purgatorio, or contemplate th 
serene splendors of the Paradiso, we must conclude that, in 
the whole range of literature, the vast creation of Dante is 
without precursor, counterpart or progeny. As his vision 
of heaven reflects like a mirror the supernal gleam of the 
gates ajar, just so surely does his dream of hell show forth 
the torments of the damned. There is, there was, there can 
be, no other of its kind. In his dark dominion Dante rules 
alone. He knows no partner in his hermit sway. Like a 
meteor shot from eternity, or as lightnings cleave the inkly 
blackness of a storm-swept sky, his lurid genius lights in 
fitful flashes the clouds that cover it, and then goes thundering 
through the vastitudes of space, in an orbit all its own, rolling 
like a planet in its solitary course. In the Inferno we find 
no Peri knocking at the gates of dawn, seeking entrance to 
the realms of light. The black wings of his imagination are 
flapping at the gates of doom, or swooping like an avenging 
deity along the dread Plutonian shore, where Tartarean 
caverns re-echo a myriad groans and sighs, rumbling their 
deep diapason of hopeless, helpless soirow in that dismal 
concavity of endless woe. At the unutterable horror of such 
scenes the heart sickens and revolts; and yet, drawn by the 
spell of a terror so subtle, so resistless, so profound and un- 



76 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

defined, we must turn and look, and look again. And then, 
passing from the blighted regions of the damned, anon he 
soars aloft on pinions of eternal light to sing his deathless 
song of Paradise : 

"As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form 
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm, 
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head." 

Says Dr. Richard Garnett in his Italian Literature: "He 
moves through life a great, lonely figure, estranged from human 
fellowship at every point, a citizen of eternity, misplaced and 
ill-starred in time; too great to mingle with his age, or, by 
consequence, to be of much practical service to it; too em- 
bittered and austere to manifest in action the ineffable tender- 
ness which may be clearly read in his writings; one whose 
friends and whose thoughts are in the other world, while he 
is yet more keenly alive than any other man to the realities 
of this; one whose greatness impressed the world from the 
first and whom it does not yet fully know after the study of 
six hundred years." They know him best who fully under- 
stand the scholastic teachings of his great contemporaries, 
Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. The 
nature of his epic style is apparent from the Commedia, as 
Dante and Virgil enter the infernal gate: 

"All hope abandon, ye who enter here!" 
These words in somber color I beheld 
Written upon the summit of a gate. 

He led me in among the secret things; 
There sighs, complaints and ululations loud 
Resounded through the air without a star, 
Whence I, at the beginning, wept thereat. 
Languages diverse, horrible dialects, 
Accents of anger, words of agony, 
And voices high and hoarse, with sound of hands, 



DANTE 77 

Made up a tumult that goes whirling on 

Forever in that air, forever black, 

Even as the sand doth when the whirlwind breathes. 

It was the high prerogative of this super-spirit to pass 
eternal judgment on the souls of men. The audacity of the 
conception in its very daring is sublime. The project, lightly 
essayed, would have been an impious profanation. It almost 
savored of attempting the throne of the Infinite. Who could 
dare to hold within his hand the scales of eternal justice? 
None — none but the proud and melancholy soul of Dante! 
And six hundred years of human thought have all but decreed 
his judgments "just and righteous altogether." Let us view 
but a single one of his judgments; and let the reader answer 
if it be just or no: 

"* * *This miserable fate 
Suffer the wretched souls of those who lived 
Without praise or blame, with that ill band 
Of angels mix'd, who nor rebellious proved, 
Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves 
Were only. * * * 

These of death 
No hope may entertain ; and their blind life 
So meanly passes, that all other lots 
They envy. Fame of them the world hath none. 
Nor suffers; mercy and justice scorn them both. 
Speak not of them, but look, and pass them by." 
— ("Inferno," Carey's Translation.) 

We can go no further with him now, but must leave him, 
with his Virgil, here. But the readei is adjured to follow 
where he leads — up the holy mount of the Purgatorio, and 
with Beatrice to the Promised Land. For, as Dean Church 
says, "Dante certainly did not intend to be read only in fine 
passages — to be properly understood, and properly ap- 
preciated, he must be read as a whole, and studied as a 
whole." 



78 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Following is Ruskin's tribute to the supremacy of Dante's 
Heaven: "Every line of the Paradiso is full of the most ex- 
quisite and spiritual expression of Christian truths. The 
song, which Dante sings in the Paradiso, is the everlasting 
happiness of man in vision, love and enjoyment united to his 
Creator; a canticle as lofty in its flight as it is true in its sub- 
lime reality, for such is the blissful destiny restored to man 
by Christ's redemption." 

The most discerning American appreciation of Dante 
comes from the illustrious scholar, James Russell Lowell. 
His masterly production is a deep mine of learning on the 
subject of thirteenth century literature, and it is regarded by 
scholars as the most complete presentation of Dante's im- 
mortal work that has ever been produced. Those who can- 
not grasp the theology or the moral philosophy of the great 
Italian will at least be able to appreciate his literary style. 
Of this remarkable style Macaulay says, in his "Criticisms 
on the Principal Italian Writers:" 

"The style of Dante is, if not his highest, his most peculiar 
excellence. I know nothing with which it can be compared. 
The noblest models of Greek composition must yield to it. 
* * * I have heard the most eloquent statesman of the age 
remark that, next to Demosthenes, Dante is the writer who 
ought to be most attentively studied by every man who 
desires to attain oratorical excellence." 

In his essay on John Milton, Macaulay observes of the 
"Divine Comedy," that "There is perhaps no work in the 
world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful." That remark, 
however, is more nearly applicable to the "Inferno" than it 
is to the third section of Dante's great masterpiece. The 
fact is that most critics of Dante have studied little but his 
"Inferno." Macaulay's famous comparison of Milton and 
Dante shows upon its face that the author's mind was upon 
the "Inferno" and that the "Purgatorio" and the "Paradiso" 
did not enter seriously into the comparison with Milton. 



DANTE 79 

However, as this famous English critic so well remarks, "We 
will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of settling 
precedency between two such writers." It is conceded by 
most critics now that Dante exceeds all others in pure spirit- 
uality. He stands at the head of Christian civilization as 
surely as Homer stands at the head of the Pagan. 

To Dante belongs the supreme distinction of applying 
the Christian solution to all the great problems of existence. 
His emphasis on the fact that Love is 

"* * * the one far-off, divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves," 

is a heritage from St. Francis of Assisi. The "Canticle of 
the Sun" is an attempt at the reconciliation of the disparate 
elements of a creation which "groaneth and travaileth in pain 
even until now." Thus it is Love, the Reconciler, that meets 
Dante at the threshhold of the Vita Nuova, that guides him 
securely through the labyrinth of passion and error, and 
finally ushers him into Paradise, where his love is in final and 
undisputed possession. The very last line of the Paradiso 
is couched in this key, and s r ngs of 

"L'amor che muove il Sole el'altre stelle." 

"No uninspired hand," says Cardinal Manning, "has 
ever written thoughts so high, in words so burning and so 
resplendent, as the last stanza of the Divinia Commedia. 
It was said of St. Thomas, 'Post Summam Thomae, nihil restat 
nisi lumen gloriae.' It may be said of Dante, 'Post Dantis 
Parodisum, nihil restat nisi visio Dei. 1 

Says Percy Bysshe Shelley in his most beautiful essay, 
"A Defense of Poetry," after comparing the great Italian 
with Milton: "Dante was the first awakener of entranced 
Europe; he created a language, in itself music and persuasion, 
out of a chaos of inharmonious barbarisms. He was the 
congregator of those great spirits who presided over the 
resurrection of learning; the Lucifer of that starry flock which 



80 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

in the thirteenth century shone forth from republican Italy, 
as from a heaven, into the darkness of the benighted world. 
His very words are instinct with spirit; each is as a spark, a 
burning atom of inextinguishable thought; and many yet lie 
covered in the ashes of their birth, and pregnant with the 
lightning which has as yet found no conductor." 

The year 1921, the six hundredth anniversary of Dante's 
death, was marked by literary and public celebrations in his 
honor throughout the civilized world. 



ii. 

petrarch. 



Francesco Petrarch, father of the Renaissance, was born in 
1304 and died in 1374, after a career seldom or never paralleled 
in the literary annals of any nation. He was born at Arezzo 
while his father was an exile from Florence. Like so many 
of the Italian literati, young Petrarch was intended for the 
law, but his over-mastering passion for classical learning 
carried his talents to a higher court. 

Petrarch wrote more in Latin than in Italian, and prided 
himself chiefly upon his "Africa," a Latin poem in hexameters, 
in which he celebrated the adventures of Scipio Africanus. 
But it is his sonnets that have shed imperishable glory upon 
his name. He did not invent the sonnet, but he furnished a 
model which has served as a pattern for all succeeding ages. 
In these Italian works he established and perfected that pure 
and elegant Italian style which has suffered less change in the 
past five hundred years than it had experienced in the single 
century preceding him. 

"Dante and Petrarch are, as it were," says Hallam 
(Literature of Europe), "the morning stars of our modern 
literature." After Dante, Petrarch was the real creator of 
the Italian language. But his first great service to polite 



PETRARCH 81 

learning was the work of discovering, collating, copying and 
translating the manuscripts of the ancient classics, a labor to 
which he continuously applied himself with the most passionate 
ardour. He restored classical antiquity to Italy, and through 
Italy to the world. Heeren, the great German authority, 
declares that the remainder of the ancient manuscripts would 
have been hopelessly lost if Petrarch had not appeared when 
he did. He is, therefore, beyond question, the restorer of 
polite learning, and the genuine father of the Renaissance. 
He caught up anew the fires of ancient civilization, and re- 
kindled them in the hearts of his countrymen. He brushed 
the dust from the crumbling monuments of antiquity 
and revealed for us the beauties of ancient art ; he touched the 
mouldering manuscripts of a bygone age, and they poured 
forth their golden flood of eloquence and song into the treasure 
house of modern letters ; he tore aside the veil of literary dark- 
ness that had for centuries beclouded the mind of man and 
disclosed to our delighted vision the sun-crowned heights of 
Olympus. 

Petrarch had visited the seats of learning in Germany and 
France, and enjoyed a wider acquaintance among men of 
letters than any other literary man of his time. Chaucer 
knew him personally and his influence upon English letters 
was immediate and extensive. Shakespeare mentions him 
in "Romeo and Juliet." In 1570 we find Ascham, in 'The 
Scholemaster," voicing the unique complaint that the people 
of England had begun to hold "in more reverence the triumphes 
of Petrarche than the Genesis of Moses; they make more 
account of Tullies offices than S. Paules epistles; of a tale in 
Bocace than a storie of the Bible." Quite so, indeed. "These 
bee the inchantementes of Circes," he says, "brought out of 
Italie to marre mens maners in England." And old Putten- 
ham, in "The Arte of English Poesie" declares: "In the 
latter end of the same king (Henry the eight) reigne, sprong 
up a new company of courtly makers — who having travailed 



82 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

into Italie, and there tasted the sweete and stately measures 
and stile of Dante, Arioste, and Petrarche, they greatly 
polished our rude and homely maner of vulgar Poesie." One 
of these "courtly makers" was the Earl of Surrey, whom 
Taine calls "the English Petrarch." 

But there is no English Petrarch, and there will never be. 
His sonnets to Laura are as inimitable as are the sublime 
creations of Dante. In the crucible of his genius, the lambent 
flame of an undying love becomes a supernal passion, with all 
dross of lust or taint of grossness or sensuality forever purged 
away. Hallam says: "It has never again been given to 
man, nor will it probably be given, to dip his pen in those 
streams of ethereal purity which have made the name of Laura 
immortal." 

Adored throughout Italy, Petrarch was the peculiar 
divinity of the Florentines. In 1540 the Academy of Florence 
was instituted for the sole purpose of perfecting the Tuscan 
language by the study of the poems of Petrarch. The critics 
of the period set him up as a model of literary perfection, with- 
out flaw or defect, and he was worshipped as a literary idol. 
Commentaries were written upon almost every word, and 
whole volumes upon a single sonnet. 

Never was genius so amply and so spontaneously re- 
warded as in the case of Petrarch. He numbered among his 
friends and patrons the famous Colonni family, theVisconti, 
the Carrara family of Padua, the Corregi of Parma, King 
Robert of Naples and the Doge of Venice. Pope Clement VI. 
conferred upon him one or two sincecure benefices and would 
have made him a bishop if he had taken holy orders. The 
same pontiff offered him the post of apostolical secretary, and 
the offer was renewed by Pope Innocent VI. In 1340 he was 
invited to both Rome and Paris to receive the laurel crown. 
He chose Rome, where, on Easter Sunday, 1341, he was 
solemnly crowned, amid the greatest possible pomp and 
splendor. Nothing in the entire history of Italy reflects a 



PETRARCH 83 

finer glory upon the Italian people than their voluntary 
adulation of the great author of the purest love-poems the 
world has ever known. 

Much has been written upon the subject of Laura and of 
the nature of the poet's attachment for her. Byron asks, in 
the 8th stanza of the third Canto of his Don Juan: 

"Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife, 
He would have written sonnets all his life?" 

But the inquiry scarcely concerns us now. The Academy of 
Ferrara, after full investigation, solemnly decreed the Platonic 
purity of Petrarch's devotion. It is highly probable that 
Laura, while having an actual, physical basis of fact (not 
being, as some have supposed, a mere figment of poetic imagi- 
nation), was in the' conception of Petrarch more of an ideal 
personage, in the nature of a feminine abstraction, like Dante's 
Beatrice, Surry's Geraldine, Sidney's Stella, or Tasso's 
Leonora, — not women, but woman in general — although each 
actually existed to inspire a poet's love. Boccaccio's Maria, 
to be sure, must be placed in a category somewhat less Platonic. 
Petrarch was not a skeptic like Boccaccio, but throughout 
his career firmly professed his Christian faith. It is not our 
proper function to further judge his morals now. Enough 
for us the chastened note, the subdued pathos, the sombre 
sweetness, the solemn, penitential beauty of the song he sings: 

Yon nightingale, whose strain so sweetly flows, 

Mourning her ravished young or much-loved mate, 

A soothing charm o'er all the valleys throws 

And skies, with notes well tuned to her sad state. 
— (Sonnet XLIIL, "To Laura in Death.") 

Or this, from his "Triumph of Eternity:" 

Those spacious regions where our fancies roam, 
Pain'd by the past, expecting ills to come, 
In some dread moment, by the fates assigned, 



84 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Shall pass away, nor leave a rack behind ; 
And Time's revolving wheel shall lose at last 
The speed that spins the future and the past: 
And, sovereign of an undisputed throne, 
Awful eternity shall reign alone." 

And thus he views, with Christian fortitude, the end of all (To 
Laura in Death, Canzone V., St. 6): 

For death betimes is comfort, not dismay, 
And who can rightly die needs no delay. 

Schopenhauer, in his essay "On Authorship and Style," 
mentions Petrarch as among those "men who think for them- 
selves, those who have not deigned to imitate." Although 
known to literary history chiefly as the master of the love- 
sonnet, Petrarch was one of the leading statesmen of his 
generation, if not, indeed, of the Middle Ages. A great part 
of his long and active life was given to the work of diplomacy 
and the adjusting of differences between rival nations and 
kingdoms. He was the best known individual on the con- 
tinent of Europe, and was esteemed by all the rulers and 
statesmen of his day. Nor were his literary compositions by 
any means confined to poetry. He is the reputed founder of 
the modern science of geography. He wrote many essays, 
philosophic, political and literary. Although involved in 
many controversies, he was generally beloved. One of his 
quarrels, which may now be viewed as highly ludicrous, was 
his war with the physicians. When Pope Clement VI. was 
about to die, Petrarch wrote him to beware of the physicians. 
"I tremble to see your bed always surrounded with physi- 
cians," he wrote, "who are never agreed, because it would 
be a reproach to the second to think like the first." In the 
ensuing controversy with the medical quacks of that day 
Petrarch acquitted himself like Moliere. He wrote a work 
called "Four Books of Invectives Against Physicians." When 
some friends sought to dissuade him from a contemplated 



PETRARCH 85 

visit to Rome, because of the fever there raging, the poet 
replied that he feared the physicians more than the fever. 

Petrarch's wit never failed him. In a certain war be- 
tween Venice and Padua his home was threatened. A friend 
at Verona wrote him, saying, "Only write your name above 
the door of your house, and fear nothing; it will be your safe- 
guard." That precaution saved the house of Pindar, in 
ancient times, and subsequently protected Montaigne, but 
Petrarch was not so confiding. He replied to his friend: 
"I should be sorry to trust them. Mars respects not the 
favorites of the Muses; I have no such idea of my name as 
that it would shelter me from the furies of war." 

The leading English biography of Petrarch is by the poet 
Thomas Campbell, and is published in two octavo volumes. 
"In summing up Petrarch's character, moral, political and 
poetical," the English poet says, "I should not stint myself 
to the equivocal phrase used by Tacitus representing Agricola; 
but should at once claim for his memory the title both of 
great and good. A restorer of ancient learning, a rescuer of 
its treasures from oblivion, an Italian patriot who was above 
provincial partialities, a poet who still lives in the hearts of 
his country, and who is shielded from oblivion by more 
generations than there were hides in the seven-fold shield of 
Ajax — if this was not a great man, many who are so called 
must bear the title unworthily. He was a faithful friend 
and a devoted lover, and appears to have been one of the most 
fascinating beings that ever existed. Even when his failings 
were admitted, it must still be said that even his failings 
leaned to virtue's side, and, altogether, we may pronounce that 

His life was gentle, and the elements 

So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up 

And say to all the world, "This was a man!" 



86 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

III. 

BOCCACCIO. 

Giovanni Boccaccio, the father of the novel, was born 1313 
and died 1375. Gay, garrulous, amorous old Boccaccio, the 
sport of passion and the slave of lust! He can now hardly 
be read in unexpurgated form; he is for the most part unfit 
for publication at the present time, in circles where moral 
purity is desired; but, for all that, there can be no complete 
knowledge of Italian literature without at least a partial knowl- 
edge of Boccaccio. Without question, he is one of the really 
great figures of Tuscan literature. Some authorities, indeed, 
place him as the third great figure of Italian literature, out- 
ranked by none but Dante and Petrarch. The remarkable 
fluidity of his purling style, swift, rapid and sparkling, marks 
him as the creator of classic Italian prose, and his mother 
tongue owes its earliest model of grace and refinement to his 
pen. 

His love affairs were as numerous as they were discredit- 
able. But his "Fiammetta," the poetic name which he con- 
ferred upon Maria, daughter of King Robert of Naples, in- 
spired him to write his "Filocopo," his "Ameto," and his 
"Fiammetta," all which were designed to celebrate her charms. 
He wrote many stories and poems, and a life of Dante. But 
his most famous work is the Decameron, a collection of one 
hundred tales. He imagines these stories as being related 
by a party of ten refugees from the plague at Florence. He 
also wrote a history of the plague, and likewise translated 
many of the Greek and Latin authors into Italian. In the 
labor of discovering, rescuing and translating ancient manu- 
scripts he was almost as indefatigable as his friend Petrarch, 
under whose influence he fell at the age of thirty-seven. He 
seems thereafter to have abandoned his wayward life, and to 
have devoted his later energies to the purposes of a serious 
scholarship. Following the leadership of Petrarch he became 



BOCCACCIO 87 

a leader in the humanistic revival then upon its upward 
surge. It was at his suggestion that Lorenzo Pilato made the 
first translation of Homer into Latin. 

In popularity, the collection of tales in the Decameron has 
never been surpassed in the history of the world's literature. 
It has never, indeed, been equalled in popularity, if we except 
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; and, as is well known, Chaucer 
was deeply indebted to Boccaccio, as were Shakespeare, 
Moliere, Fontaine, and others. It appears that Boccaccio 
fully repented of the errors of his youth. Upon the advice of 
a dying priest, he was about to retire from the world and join 
a monastic order, when he was dissuaded from this course by 
his friend Petrarch. 

Boccaccio was highly honorded by his admiring country- 
men of Florence, and he represented his people upon many 
diplomatic missions. The object of one of these missions 
was to extend to Petrarch an official invitation to take up 
his residence in Florence. But the highest honor his city 
ever conferred upon him, and a most fitting dignity, too, was 
bestowed in 1373, two years before his death, when he was 
appointed to expound the "Divinia Commedia" of Dante, 
at a salary of one hundred golden florins per annum. Had his 
life been spared for a few years it is not to be doubted that 
his lectures upon Dante would have developed into an interest- 
ing and scholarly work, vastly exceeding in value much that 
has been written upon this most glorious product of the middle 
ages. But his fame rests upon the Decameron. 

"Among many views in which this epoch-making book 
may be regarded," says F. M. Warren, in his History of the 
Novel Previous to the Sixteenth Century, "is that of an 
alliance between the elegant and superfine literature of courts 
and the vigorous but homely literature of the people. Nobles 
and ladies, accustomed to far-fetched and ornate compositions 
like the Tilocopo', were made able by the 'Decameron' to 
hear the same stories which amused the common people, 



88 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

told in a style which, too, the uneducated could appreciate 
and enjoy, but purged of much roughness and vulgarity and 
told in the only clear, forcible prose that had yet been pro- 
duced. This is Boccaccio's best defense against the charge 
of licentiousness which has been so misconstruingly laid 
against him. He markedly did not write for the purpose of 
stimulating the passions, but reproduced the ordinary talk of 
moments of relaxation, giving it the attraction of a pure and 
classic style." All which may be true, and to some extent 
is undoubtedly true. But, none the less, men make the morals 
of the ages in which they live, and we cannot doubt that, had 
Boccaccio so desired, he could, without detracting from their 
literary beauty, have made his tales as pure as the love-poems 
of Petrarch, a product of the same age that gave us the De- 
cameron. The same age, also, gave us the matchless moral 
philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. But what is here said 
is not designed to in anywise question the literary value of 
Boccaccio nor his position as not only the founder of the novel, 
but the greatest novelist of Italy up to the time of Allesandro 
Mansoni, who died in 1873, and whose "I Promessa Sposi" 
is doubtless better known today than any Italian book since 
the Divine Comedy, and remains to this day as the greatest 
romance of Italian prose. 



IV. 

TASSO. 



Torquato Tasso, the greatest epic poet of the modern ages* 
was born at Sorrento, Naples, in 1544, and died at the mon- 
astery of St. Onofrio, in Rome, in 1595. His father, a poet of 
respectable talents — and not without the temporal mis- 
fortunes which so often attend such distinction — destined 
young Torquato for the law. But the youthful poet, while 
outwardly engrossed with his legal studies, was secretly 



TASSO 89 

occupied with the composition of his "Rinaldo," a romantic 
poem in twelve cantos, which was received with incredible 
applause throughout Italy. Tasso had not then attained his 
eighteenth year. In one of the closing stanzas of the piece he 
thus alludes to his youth, and to the difficulties under which 
he has worked : 

"Thus have I sung in battlefield and bower, 

Rinaldo's cares, and prattled through my page, 

While other studies claim'd the irksome hour, 
In the fourth lustre of my verdant age; 

Studies from which I hoped to have the power 
The wrongs of adverse fortune to assuage ; 

Ungrateful studies, whence I pine away 

Unknown to others, to myself a prey." 

Sir William Blackstone (author of the famous "Com- 
mentaries,") when he gave up literature for the law, wrote 
the poem, U A Lawyer's Farewell to His Muse." But this 
historical romance of Tasso's proved to be the muse's fare- 
well to the law. From that time forth, young Tasso's studies, 
diligently prosecuted at various schools, were wholly literary 
and philosophical. The dedication of his "Rinaldo" to the 
Cardinal d'Este, brought him to the favorable notice of the 
great house of Este, one of whose members, Alphonso II., 
was sovereign duke of Ferrara. He soon accepted an in- 
vitation from the duke to enter his service, and proceeded to 
the court of Ferrara, the scene of his glory and his grief. 

For some years Tasso was the chief glory of this brilliant 
and luxurious court. Every honor was paid him that was 
due to the first poet of his day. In a clime so congenial his 
fertile genius produced with ease. Here he brought forth 
his great pastoral drama, the "Aminta," a pastoral worthy 
of Virgil or Theocritus, and which, if he had written nothing 
else, would have forever enshrined his name among the 
world's great poets. Meanwhile he was rapidly completing 



90 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

the great temple of his dreams, the "Gerusalemme Liberata" — 
Jerusalem Delivered — the great metrical story of the Crusades. 
This vast work, in twenty cantos, is the masterpiece of a 
master mind. It is pre-eminently the one incontestably 
great epic poem of the Age of Chivalry — a literary labyrinth 
of knightly deeds, untainted love and Christian zeal. 

Tasso, of course, cannot be said to equal Homer in poetic 
fire; but Voltaire insists that he is superior to Homer in the 
choice of his subject. The gloomy grandeur of this stanza, 
from the fourth canto, where Satan summons his infernal 
band, is seldom surpassed in the whole range of epic literature: 
"Its hoarse alarm the Stygian trumpet sounded 
Through the dark dwellings of the damn'd; the vast 
Tartarean caverns tremblingly rebounded, 
Blind air rebellowing to the dreary blast; 
Hell quaked with all its millions ; never cast 
Th' ethereal skies a discord so profound, 
When the red lightnings' vivid flash was past; 
Nor ever with such tremors rock'd the ground." 

The reader will note how well the words portray the very 
sounds and motions described in this passage. This is 
decidedly Homeric, this trait being a capital feature of Homer. 
The introduction of Satan in the fourth canto, from which 
we have just quoted, is productive of exceedingly striking 
effects, and has been imitated by Milton. The stories of 
knight-errantry, the enchantments, charms and con juries 
which characterize the wild, rich fancy of the chivalric age 
have been much criticized in Tasso; and yet, in this regard, 
the chief difference between his romance and that of Homer 
and Virgil is simply this: Tasso's is the romance of Christian- 
ity; theirs is the romance of paganism. As compared with 
Virgil, Tasso is deficient in tenderness; yet we search Virgil 
in vain for a sweeter picture of rustic placidity than this, in 
the seventh canto, when Erminia is awakened in her shepherds' 
retreat : 



TASSO 91 

"She slept, till in her dreaming ear the bowers 
Whisper'd, the gay birds warbled of the dawn; 
The river roar'd ; the winds to the young flowers 
Made love; the blithe bee wound its dulcet horn; 
Roused by the mirth and melodies of morn, 
Her languid eyes she opens, and perceives 
The huts of shepherds on the lonely lawn ; 
While seeming voices, 'twixt the waves and leaves, 
Call back her scatter'd thoughts, again she sighs and 
grieves." 

An astute and discriminating English critic has very 
properly observed: "The Jerusalem is, in rank and dignity, 
the third regular epic poem in the world; and comes next to 
the Iliad and Aeneid." As Lamartine so beautifully says: 
"Urged by piety no less than by the muse, Tasso dreamed of a 
crusade of poetic genius, aspiring to equal by the glory and 
the sanctity of his songs the crusades of the lance he was 
about to celebrate." Indeed, a primary characteristic of 
Tasso's genius was a deep and somber spirituality. The 
Italian critic, Corniani, places the prose of Tasso almost on a 
level with the poetry. "We find in it," he says, "dignity, 
rhythm, elegance, and purity without affectation, and per- 
spicuity without vulgarity. He is never trifling or verbose, 
like his contemporaries of that century, but endeavors to fill 
every part of his dicourses with meaning." 

Of the seven terrible years he spent in a mad-house at 
Ferrara, one shudders to think. He was imprisoned there 
by order of the Duke, whose only published excuse was that 
he was detaining Tasso for the purpose of "curing" him of 
his insanity. But the real purpose of Tasso's incarceration 
will, in all probability, forever remain a mystery, as baffling 
as the motive which exiled Ovid from the court of Augustus. 
It is hardly possible that any alienist of even that crude age 
would have recommended an underground dungeon for this 
purpose; yet it was in an underground cell that the Duke of 



92 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Ferrara buried for seven years the most sublime genius of the 
age. During this unhappy period portions of the Jerusalem 
were first published, from manuscripts stolen from the poet. 
The growing insanity of the unhappy poet, and his romantic 
love of Leonora, are portrayed with great poetic beauty and 
spiritual charm by Goethe, in his drama "TorquatoTasso," 
wherein (Act II., Sc. 1) he makes the poet speak in this 
fashion of his greatest work : 

"Whatever in my song doth reach the heart 
And find an echo there, I owe to one, 
And one alone! No image undefin'd 
Hover 'd before my soul, approaching now 
In radiant glory to retire again. 
I have myself, with mine own eyes, beheld 
The type of every virtue, every grace; 
What I have copied thence will aye endure; 
The heroic love of Tancred to Clorinda, 
Erminia's silent and unnoticed truth, 
Sophronia's greatness and Olinda's woe; 
These are not shadows by illusion bred; 
I know they are eternal, for they are." 

Finally, upon the petition of Pope Sixtus V., and others, 
Tasso was released, to spend the remainder of his life chiefly 
at Rome and Naples. Here he was the recipient of every 
honor that ambition could covet or genius desire. He was 
entertained as a guest at the Vatican. The mansions of the 
great were opened to him. Wealth and honors were showered 
upon him. With a soul chastened by sorrow and sweetened 
by adversity, he continued his literary work. He was to 
have been crowned with the laurel crown at the capitol (the 
first to receive that honor since Petrarch), but before the 
event transpired, death sealed his honors and relieved him 
of his cares. He died surrounded by the monks of the monas- 
tery, and his last words were: "Into thy hands, O Lord!" 



ARIOSTO 93 

He made the precepts of Christian doctrine the practice of 
his life; and, as one biographer observes, "the darkness of his 
fate had a tendency to turn his views beyond this world, as 
night, which hides the earth, reveals the sky." 

In his later years Tasso published the "Gerusalemme 
Conquistata," greatly inferior to his other work, but he 
imagined it to be superior; just as Milton mistakenly pre- 
ferred his "Paradise Regained" to the "Paradise Lost." 



v. 

ARIOSTO. 



Ludivico Ariosto, one of the greatest names in Italian 
literature and one of the great poets of the world, was born 
at Reggio September 8, 1474, and died at Ferrara June 6, 
1533. Like Petrarch, Tasso and Boccaccio, Ariosto was 
early destined for the law, but abandoned his irksome studies 
after five years of futile and misdirected effort. The un- 
timely death of his father cast upon the shoulders of the young 
poet the burden of caring for a large family. 

Like that of Tasso, the career of Ariosto was begun by 
entering the service of the House of Este. During the ten 
years of his service under the Cardinal d'Este, while engaged 
principally in diplomatic missions and military operations, 
he completed his master work, the Orlando Furioso, which will 
stand for all time as the great romance of the Age of Chivalry. 
The poem consists of about 5,000 stanzas, in forty-six cantos. 
Dismissed by the Cardinal, the poet cast his lot with the 
Cardinal's brother, the Duke of Ferrara, to whose service 
he devoted the remainder of his life. 

In addition to his principal work, Ariosto also wrote 
comedies, satires, sonnets and other poems, all which, though 
exhibiting a high order of genius, have been so eclipsed by 
his great masterpiece that they are but little known. The 



94 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Orlando Furioso has long been recognized as the greatest 
work of its kind in any language. Twenty-five years after 
Ariosto's death Bernardo Tasso, father of the immortal 
author of the "Jerusalem Delivered," and himself a poet of 
distinction, wrote of the tremendous popularity of Ariosto's 
great poem: "There is neither scholar nor artisan, boy nor 
girl, nor old man, who is contented with reading it only 
once. Do you not hear people every day singing these stanzas 
in the streets and in the fields? I do not believe that in the 
same length of time as had passed since this poem was given 
to the world, that there have been printed or published or 
seen so many Homers or Virgils as 'Furiosos.' ' 

But Ariosto's popularity has been by no means confined 
to his native land. Next to Homer, he has been the favorite 
poet of Europe. More than sixty editions of the Orlando 
Furioso were published in the sixteenth century. When 
Galileo was asked how he acquired the perspicuity and grace 
which so distinguished his philosophical writings, he replied: 
"By the continual study of Ariosto." One of the most learned 
critics of modern times, Henry Hallam, in his "Literature of 
Europe'' (Vol. I., Chap. IV., Sect. II) does not hesitate to 
say: "The Orlando Furioso, as a great single poem, has been 
very rarely surpassed in the living records of poetry. He 
must yield to three, and only three, of his predecessors. He 
has not the force, simplicity, and truth to nature of Homer, 
the exquisite style and sustained majesty of Virgil, nor the 
originality and boldness of Dante. The most obvious parallel 
is Ovid, whose Metamorphoses, however, are far excelled by 
the Orlando Furioso, not in fertility of invention, or variety 
of images and sentiments, but in purity of taste, in grace of 
language, and harmony of versification." 

The seven satires of Ariosto were not published until 
after his death. They are written in the manner of Horace, 
whose work they fairly approximate in easy grace and Epi- 
curean cheerfulness. Tiraboschi, an eminent Italian critic, 



ARIOSTO 95 

places the satires of Ariosto at the head of all poetry of that 
class. His comedies, like so much of the early Italian comedy, 
are apparently based upon Plautus. However, when Ariosto 
is mentioned by critics, it is usually the Orlando Furioso 
which is discussed. 

For centuries there has been a controversy among 
Italian critics over the relative merits of Tasso and Ariosto. 
Each is great in his kind. But the Jerusalem is an epic, 
udged by every classic rule. The Orlando is not; it is simply 
a wonderful metrical romance, although portions of it are 
truly epical. To quote Mr. Hallam again: "The finest 
stanzas in Ariosto are fully equal to any in Tasso, but the 
latter has by no means so many feeble lines. Yet his language, 
though never affectedly obscure, is not so pellucid, and has a 
certain refinement which makes us sometimes pause to 
perceive the meaning. Whoever reads Ariosto slowly will 
probably be offended by his negligence; whoever reads Tasso 
quickly will lose something of the elaborate finish of his 
style." 

Sir Walter Scott was called "the Ariosto of the north." 
But he was not. Spenser is the English poet most naturally 
to be compared with Ariosto, for "Fierce wars and faithful 
loves did moralize the song" of both. But Spenser lacks 
the gaiety, warmth and ardor of the great Italian, although 
equalling him in rhetorical splendor and excelling him in 
morality. 

In one view of the subject, the most striking feature of 
Ariosto is the constant shifting of style and scene. In narra- 
tion and description he has never been surpassed. His variety 
is endless, his versatility most profuse; comic and satiric; 
heroic, majestic, tender, licentious — from lively to severe, 
his sportive imagination bounds and ripples along through 
his forty thousand lines, excelling in whatsoever he sees fit 
to attempt, always suiting his style to his subject, and always 
painting his moving pictures in smooth and melodious verse. 



96 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

As Virgil essayed a continuation of Homer's Iliad, so 
does Ariosto assume to continue Boiardo's Orlando Inam- 
morato. The subject is the many chivalric adventures of 
Orlando who became insane through love for Angelica. He 
is, however, finally restored to sanity. We quote from the 
39th Canto: 

"When to his former self he was restored, 
Of wiser and of manlier mind than e'er, 

From love as well was freed the enamored lord ; 
And she, so gentle deemed, so fair whilere, 

And by renowned Orlando so adored 

Did but to him a worthless thing appear. 

What he through love had lost, to re-acquire 

Was his whole study, was his whole desire." 

Although the Orlando Furioso was first published in English 
a few years after the death of Shakespeare, it is believed that 
the first really satisfactory translation was by Rose, in 1823, 
and this version is still the most popular among readers of 
English. 



VI. 
BOIARDO. 



To the casual reader Boiardo is of interest chiefly because 
of his work having suggested to Ariosto the Orlando Furioso; 
but to the student of Italian literature he is also valuable 
upon his own account. 

Matteo Maria Boiardo, Count of Scandiano, was born 
about 1430 and died in 1494. Educated at the University 
of Ferrara, he entered the service of Duke Borso of Ferrara, 
and continued in the service of his successor, Duke Ercole. 
Boiardo was one of the most finished scholars of his time, 
although Hallam holds him to be inferior in scholarship to 
Ariosto; at least, he thinks Ariosto more conversant with the 



BOIARDO 97 

Latin poets. He was the author of many dramas, song and 
other poems. He also made a translation of Herodotus into 
Italian. 

Boiardo is known to posterity principally because of his 
greatest work, the ' 'Orlando Inammorato," which, however, 
was unfinished at his death. The poem deals with the Charle- 
magne cycle, and details the adventures and chivalric love 
of Orlando for Angelica, an Oriental princess. Three editions 
of the poem were published within the twenty years following 
Boiardo's death, and within a hundred years it had passed 
through sixteen editions. Three books were added to the 
poem by Agostini, but the additions in no way equal the 
context of Boiardo. The poem was early translated into 
French, and editions now exist in all the great modern lan- 
guages. 

Francesco Berni, a noted Italian poet who died in 1536, 
who was the real perfecter of the humorous poetry of Italy, 
and whose manner has been so happily imitated by Byron 
in "Beppo" and "Don Juan," transformed Boiardo's great 
poem into a burlesque which has all but taken the place of 
the original work. In 1845 another version was brought out 
by Lodovico Domenichi which was likewise more popular than 
the original, though vastly inferior. 

Milton was familiar with the romance of Boiardo, and 
directly refers to it in the following beautiful lines from Book 
III of his "Paradise Regained:" 

"Such forces met not, nor so wide a camp, 

When Agrican with all his northern powers 

Besieged Albracca, as romancers tell, 

The city of Gallaphrone, from whence to win 

The fairest of her sex, Angelica, 

His daughter, sought by many prowest knights, 

Both Paynim, and the peers of Charlemagne, 

Such and so numerous was their chivalry." 



98 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Two of the Italian critics, Peliegrini and Castelvetro, 
have roundly berated Ariosto for building on the foundations 
of Boiardo. Ariosto, indeed, appears to have harbored no 
other design, originally, than that of carrying forward the 
story as Agostini had assumed to do before him, but in far 
better style than Agostini was capable of employing, having 
written the first few cantos of the Furioso merely, as he said, 
to please and amuse his friends. The story of the Inammorato 
must be first read, if we would fully understand and appreciate 
the Furioso. But, although more pleasing and various, the 
inventions of Ariosto are less original than those of Boiardo. 

Boiardo wrote numerous shorter poems, distinguished for 
their transparency and grace, but the fame of all these was 
so completely eclipsed by his greater work that they are now 
but little known. Typical of these shorter works, and second 
to none in its beauty, is this charming sonnet, entitled "Beauti- 
ful Gift:" 

Beautiful gift, and dearest pledge of love, 
Woven by that fair hand whose gentle aid 
Alone can heal that wound itself hath made, 

And to my wandering life a sure guide prove; 
O dearest gift all others far above 

Curiously wrought in many-colored shade, 

Ah, why with thee has not the spirit stayed, 
That with such tasteful skill to form thee strove? 

Why have I not that lovely hand with thee? 
Why have I not with thee each fond desire, 

That did such passing beauty to thee give? 
Through life thou ever shalt remain with me, 

A thousand tender sighs thou shalt inspire, 

A thousand kisses day and night receive. 



MICHELANGELO 99 

VII. 
MICHELANGELO. 

Michelangelo Buonarroti (called by the old English 
writers Michael Angelo) was born in 1475 and died, at the 
age of eighty-nine, in the year 1564, after the most brilliant 
career in the history of art. His life truly exemplified Lavatar's 
definition of art as ' 'nothing but the highest sagacity and 
exertion of human nature," and students of his manifold 
creations cannot doubt that his triple triumphs in painting, 
sculpture and architecture would at least have been equalled 
if not surpassed by the magic product of his pen if he had 
chosen to devote the sublime activities of his soul to verbal 
expression alone. Even as it was, his poems appear to have 
been as highly esteemed in his own life-time as were his other 
works of art. 

Addison has remarked the great affinity between 
designing and poetry. Schelling says that "Architecture is 
frozen music;" and Longfellow notes that "The picture that 
approaches sculpture nearest is the best picture." Whether 
in painting, or music, or sculpture, or literature, or histrionic 
art, the highest creations of genius are but blossomings of 
the soul, and although their tints may vary and each bloom 
exhale a fragrance differing from the rest, all are grown from 
the same bounteous Tree of Life of which they are the fruits 
and flowers. Great works of art are, indeed, "separate as 
billows, but one as the sea;" and they adorn the firmament 
with their deathless beauty as so many golden suns, differing 
"as one star differeth from another in glory." 

In any enlightened consideration of the literary work of 
Michelangelo we should remember, as Symonds observes, 
that "The love of beauty, the love of Florence, and the love 
of Christ, are the three main motives of his poetry." They 
were, indeed, the motives of his life. The following excerpt 
from Edgar Allen Poe's "The Poetic Principle," is peculiarly 



100 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

applicable to all the artistic creations of this great Florentine : 
"An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man, is a 
sense of the beautiful. It is at once a consequence and an 
indication of his perennial existence. It is no mere apprecia- 
tion of the beauty before us, but a wild effort to reach the 
beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the 
glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combina- 
tions among the things and thoughts of Time, to attain a 
portion of that loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, 
appertain to Eternity alone. * * * The struggle to apprehend 
supernal Loveliness — this struggle on the part of souls fittingly 
constituted, has given to the world all that which the world 
has ever been enabled at once to understand and to feel as 
poetic." 

Intellectually, Michelangelo was a child of Dante, whose 
career inspired two of his most powerful sonnets. One of 
these (translated by Symonds,) is as follows: 

From heaven his spirit came, and robed in clay 
The realms of justice and of mercy trod, 
Then rose a living man to gaze on God, 
That he might make the truth as clear as day. 

For that pure star that brightened with his ray 
The undeserving nest where I was born, 
The whole wide world would be a prize to scorn ; 
None but his maker can due guerdon pay. 

I speak of Dante, whose high work remains 
Unknown, unhonored by that thankless brood, 
Who only to just men deny their wage. 

Were I but he! Born for like lingering pains, 
Against his exile coupled with his good 
I'd gladly change the world's best heritage! 

Here we catch the same note of sadness that is chiseled with 
a perfection so exquisite and sublime in the "Pieta" in St. 



MICHELANGELO 101 

Peter's, the first group in modern sculpture; the same majesty 
which we note in the figures of the Sistine Chapel, "the 
greatest piece of work ever done by painter's hand;" and the 
same heroic dignity that reposes in the stern countenance of 
his "Moses" (done for the mausoleum of Pope Julius II), 
fittingly termed the "greatest colossal statue in modern art." 
Truly may it be said, in the words of Wordsworth, that the 
statuary of Michelangelo was but "the marble index of a 
mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought, 
alone." 

He gave the last years of his life chiefly to architecture, 
planning many buildings, in both Florence and Rome, besides 
the fortifications of Rome. He had previously been superin- 
tendent of the fortifications at Florence. In 1546 or 1547 he 
was appointed chief architect of St. Peter's, to which task 
he devoted the last eighteen years of his life. The vast 
dome of St. Peter's, the noblest work of its kind in existence, 
is his design. For his work upon St. Peter's he refused to 
accept any compensation whatever, deeming the task a 
Christian privilege and a religious duty. It was this mighty 
performance which, in part, prompted Emerson to write: 

"The hand that rounded Peter's dome 
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, 
Wrought in a sad sincerity : 
Himself from God he could not free; 
He builded better than he knew; 
The conscious stone to beauty grew." 

Of his three hundred and fifty figures in the Sistine 
Chapel, Sidney Colvin writes: "His sublimity, often in 
excess of the occasion, is here no more than equal to it; more- 
over, it is combined with the noblest elements of grace, even 
of tenderness. Whatever the soul of this great Florentine, 
the spiritual heir of Dante, with Christianity of the Middle 
Age not shaken in his mind, but expanded and transcendental- 



102 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

ized by the knowledge and love of Plato — whatever the soul 
of such a man, full of suppressed tenderness and righteous 
indignation, and of anxious questionings of coming fate, 
could conceive, that Michelangelo has expressed or shadowed 
forth in this great and significant scheme of paintings." 

Although his genius was of astonishing spontaneity, he 
attained his vast perfection by close application to his work. 
"Trifles make perfection," he said, "but perfection is no 
trifle." When he was eighty years of age he was discovered 
by Cardinal Farnese, gazing raptly upon the ruins of the 
Coliseum, and saying, "I yet go to school, that I may learn 
something." The intensity of his labor is indicated in a 
sonnet to Giovanni da Pistoja, wherein he says, half humor- 
ously, of his work in the Sistine Chapel : 

Crosswise I bend me like a Syrian bow : 

Whence false and quaint, I know, 
Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye; 
For ill can aim the gun that bends awry. 

Come then, Giovanni, try 
To succor my dead pictures and my fame ; 
Since foul I fare, and painting is my shame. 

Nearly all of his sonnets are addressed to friends. Some 
of the best, however, are upon religious subjects. Michel- 
angelo was never married. A priest once asked him why. 
"I have only too much of a wife in this art of mine," he replied. 
"She has always kept me struggling on. My children will be 
the works I leave behind me. Even though they are worth 
naught, I shall live awhile in them." And live he shall, till 
Time shall be no more! His love for Vittoria Colonna, beauti- 
ful and touching, as we learn from the sonnets, was purely 
Platonic in character. A famous painting by Hermann 
Schneider shows the inspired Florentine, standing beside 
his statue of Moses, reading his sonnets to the woman he 
loved. To her he addressed many of his most beautiful verses, 



MACHIAVELLI 103 

and after she died his mournful expressions are said to equal 
some of the sonnets of Petrarch "To Laura in Death." Like 
that of Petrarch, the love of Michelangelo is not of earthly 
kind; for, as he writes: 

Love fits the soul with wings, and bids her win 
Her flight aloft nor e'er to earth decline ; 
Tis the first step that leads her to the shrine 

Of Him who slakes the thirst that burns within. 



VIII. 

MACHIAVELLI. 

In his lecture on "Historical Writing" Dr. Blair remarks 
that "the country in Europe where the historical genius has 
shown forth with most luster, beyond doubt, is Italy." Be- 
yond question, likewise, the first historian of Italy in the 
modern age is Niccolo Machiavelli (born 1469, died 1527); 
and no writer, with the exception of Montaigne, exerted so 
great an influence upon the age which followed him. 

Machiavelli undoubtedly ranks at the head of the prose 
writers of Italy. Taine, the French critic, calls him "the 
Thucydides of his age." His dramas, "Mandragola" and 
"Clitia," bear a striking resemblance to the Athenian comedies, 
and are ranked above those of Ariosto. His "Belphegor" is 
a masterpiece of its kind. His "History of Florence" is the 
first great historical work of modern times, is the greatest 
historical work produced during the age in which he lived, 
and clearly establishes his title as the father of modern 
historical writing. This work has taken its place among the 
historical classics of the world. Throughout all his works, 
the style of Machiavelli is distinguished for simplicity, clear- 
ness and strength. 

But, aside from his history, the fame of Machiavelli 
rests almost solely upon "The Prince," a treatise on practical 



104 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

politics, which he has reduced to a science — and a very 
unpopular science, too. But, to fully understand his political 
theories, one should read "The Prince" and the "Discourses on 
Livy" together. Speaking of the first of these works, Hallam 
says: "Without palliating the worst passages, it may be said 
that few books have been more misrepresented." The same 
critic continues: "His crime, in the eyes of the world, was 
to have cast away the veil of hypocrisy, the profession of a 
religious adherence to maxims which at the same time were 
violated." In other words, Machiavelli would have been more 
popular had he advocated the throttling of weaker peoples 
under the high-sounding phrase of "self-determination," or 
preached absolutism under the guise of freedom! But Machia- 
velli was no hypocrite, and one need not be a monarchist to 
accredit him with the virtue of candor. He reasoned out a 
plan for the establishment of a powerful Italian state. His 
dream was of a united Italy. He knew that this ideal could 
never be attained by the multitude of insignificant states 
then existing. And history has since vindicated his judg- 
ment in this regard. Italy remained the prey of every foreign 
foe until it was united under a monarchial form of govern- 
ment. No one will contend that a monarchial form of govern- 
ment is necessarily the best possible government. It may, 
indeed, be the very worst. Of this fact historical illustra- 
tions are numerous. One can pay too much for political 
power. But, considering the needs and wants of a particular 
people at a particular time, a strongly centralized state may 
be, while not ideal, yet the most practicable for achieving 
the ends desired. Whether a monarchy be desirable or not 
must depend upon the ideals and purposes of the people 
governed. Every people has the right to choose its own form 
of government. Solon of Athens, greatest of the Seven Wise 
Men of Greece, admitted that his Athenian constitution was 
not the best possible, but justified it upon the theory that 
it was the best which the people would receive. A monarchy 



MACHIAVELLI 105 

may be desirable from the viewpoint of expediency, and still 
be wrong as a matter of principle. Machiavelli does not 
advise a tyrannical form of government. He recommends no 
such thing. He does state that the love of the people is a 
better security for a ruler than any fortress. 

Machiavelli does not write, like Dr. Francis Lieber, upon 
"Political Ethics." In "The Prince" he is not discussing 
ethics at all. He is simply discussing the means to an end, 
and that end was a united Italy. It is matter of surprise that 
Machiavelli 's "Prince" has been so misconstrued by so dis- 
criminating a scholar as Andrew Dickson White, who said, 
in his speech on Grotius, delivered at the peace conference at 
The Hague, in 1899: 

"The spirit which most thoroughly permeated the whole 
world, whether in war or peace, when Grotius wrote, was the 
spirit of Machiavelli — unmoral, immoral. It had been 
dominant for more than a hundred years. To measure the 
service rendered by the theory of Grotius, we have only to 
compare Machiavelli's 'Prince,' with Grotius's 'De Jure 
Belli ac Pacis.' * * * From his own conception of the attitude 
of the Divine Mind toward all the falsities of his time grew 
a theory of international morals which supplanted the princi- 
ples of Machiavelli." 

Dr. White simply failed to grasp the intense nationalism 
of the remarkable Italian, as it was grasped by the great 
American lawyer and patriot, Rufus Choate, "the Erskine of 
America," when in his address on "American Nationality," 
delivered at Boston on July 4, 1858, he asked: "What else 
formed the secret of the brief spell of Rienzi's power, and 
burned and sparkled in the poetry and rhetoric of his friend 
Petrarch, and soothed the dark hour of the grander soul of 
Machiavelli, loathing that Italy, and recalling that other day 
when 'eight hundred thousand men sprang to arms at the 
rumor of a Gallic invasion?' " Choate understood Machia- 



106 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

velli, whereas White has only voiced the popular miscon- 
ception. Thus Butler in his "Hudibras" writes: 

"Nick Machiavel had ne'er a trick, 
Though he gave his name to our Old Nick." 

And note how Shakespeare falls afoul of history: In I. 
Henry VI., York speaks of Alencon, "that notorious Machia- 
vel;" and in III. Henry VI., Gloucester speaks of "the murder- 
ous Machiavel." To fully grasp the humor of this anachro- 
nism, we should remember that Henry VI. died exactly ninety- 
eight years before Machiavelli was born. It requires a pretty 
bad reputation, indeed, to precede one's birth a hundred 
years. 

We have said that "The Prince" should be read with 
Machiavelli 's "Discourses on Livy." The observation is 
reiterated. The "Discourses" are the more valuable of the 
two dissertations, and the latter serve, in great measure, to 
tone down the asperities of the former, although Macaulay, 
apparently, finds no good in either. The "Discourses" 
comprise three books, of 143 chapters. In this treatise, the 
greatest of its kind since Aristotle, the author founded a 
school of philosophical politics, and prepared the way for 
Bodin and Montesquieu in France, Lord Bacon and John 
Locke in England, and Francis Lieber in America. 

Machiavelli was a statesman, a diplomat, a political 
philosopher and a practical politician. He was always honest 
and was always poor. The evil he is said to have voiced is 
often referred to by those who have never read him — but it 
is seldom or never quoted. Let us quote some of the good in 
Machiavelli. To those who seek political honors only for 
selfish ends, we commend this axiom, from the "Discourses" 
(III, 38) : "For titles do not reflect honor on men, but rather 
men on their titles" — Perche non i titoli illustrano gli uomini, 
ma gli uomini i titoli! That is not immoral; nor is it "un- 
moral;" nor are these two phrases from the same source: 



METASTASIO 107 

"There should be many judges; for few will always do 
the will of few." 

'Tor as laws are necessary that good manners may be 
preserved, so there is need of good manners that laws may be 
maintained." And here is another Machiavellian maxim 
which all politicians will do well to heed: 

"Brains are of three generations: those that understand 
of themselves, those that understand when another shows 
them, and those that understand neither of themselves nor 
by the showing of others." 



IX. 
. METASTASIO. 

Pietro Metastasio was born at Rome January 13, 1698, 
and died at Vienna April 12, 1782. He is still one of the most 
popular poets of Italy. Metastasio (whose family name was 
Trapassi), was of obscure parentage, but his genius early 
atoned for his humble birth. His youthful talents drew the 
attention of Gravina, the jurisconsult, who thenceforth 
assumed responsibility for his education. Gravina was 
devoted to the Greek drama, and soon communicated his 
literary passion to the willing mind of his pupil. Never was 
the seed of poesy cast upon more fecund soil. 

At the age of twenty-six Metastasio produced one of his 
most famous dramas, "La Dione abbandonata," which 
brought him to the notice of cultured Europe. Four years 
later, at the age of thirty, he was appointed to the office of 
"court poet" at Vienna. His fame throughout Europe was 
now established. His "La Dione," "II Catone" and "IlSiroe" 
were known in every center of art and literature. While at 
Vienna he produced "Giuseppe riconosciuto," "II Demo- 
foonte," and "Olimpiade." The melodramas "Clemenza di 
Tito" and "Attilio Regolo," are among the best of his works. 



108 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Metastasio wrote sixty-three dramas and forty-eight 
cantatas, besides numerous elegies, canzonette, sonnets and 
translations. His works have been translated into many 
languages, and frequently set to music by celebrated com- 
posers, his words lending themselves most readily to operatic 
uses. The style of his dramas is musical in a marked degree, 
combining with great beauty of sentiment the facile charms 
of lyrical grace and elegance. The closeness and rapidity of 
his dialogue bear a strong resemblance to the classical Greek 
tragedy. The constant change of incident, the broken dia- 
logue, the rapid expressions of passion, are suggestive of the 
style of Guarini's "Pastor Fido," which, in turn, harks back 
to the "Aminta" of Tasso, who drew his pictures directly 
from the classic models of Ovid, Virgil and Theocritus. 
Editions of his works have been published at Florence, Turin, 
Genoa, Mantua, and Paris. 

In 1690 Giovanni Crescimbeni and Giovanni Vincenzo 
Gravina founded in Rome an academy called the Arcadia. 
Its purpose was to promote greater naturalness of expression 
in poetic forms. The Academy failed, but it did bring forth 
some good verse, written in its three manners. In the first 
manner the sonnet and the madrigal were cultivated; in the 
second, that of love lyrics; in the third, that of the occasional 
poem. Metastasio was the most distinguished of all who 
shared in this movement. He began his career as a lyric 
poet of the second Arcadian manner. However, he is now 
remembered only for his operatic dramas, "masterpieces of a 
time when it was still considered necessary that the libretto 
of an opera should be a work of art." 

While Metastasio, as a whole, is little known in English, 
excerpts from his plays have, because of their good sense and 
feeling, surmounted the barriers of all languages, and are 
known in every land and clime. For example, many who have 
had no opportunity to read the "Giuseppe riconosciuto," 
are familiar with this quotation from the play: "The canker 



METASTASIO 109 

which the trunk conceals is revealed by the leaves, the fruit 
or the flower" — a truth so sound as to become an axiom, 
and so poetically expressed that it cannot be forgotten. 
And this, from the same great drama: "If our inward griefs 
were seen written on our brow, how many would be pitied 
who now are envied!" Let him say it in the style and idiom 
so peculiarly his own: 

Se a ciascum 1' interno affanno 
Si leggesse in fronta Scritto, 
Quanti mai, che invidia fanno, 
Ci farebbero pieta! 

In another of his greater works, "La Clemenza di Tito," 
we find this noble sentiment: "To take away life is a power 
which the vilest of the earth have in common; to give it 
belongs to gods and kings alone." Another of his phrases 
that has crept around the world is the following, from "II 
Trionfo di Clelia:" " Know that the slender shrub which is 
seen to bend conquers when it yields to the storm." Still 
another characteristic phrase, illustrating the author's pastoral 
elegance, is the following, from the "Alcide al Bivio:" "That 
water which falls from some Alpine height is dashed, broken, 
and will murmur loudly, but grows limpid by its fall." In 
this sentence, as in others, we may better grasp the rapid 
movement, the short measure and the lilting music of Metas- 
tasio's operatic style, by viewing it in his native Italian: 

Quell' onda, che ruina 
Dalla pendice alpina, 
Balza, si frange, a mormora 
Ma limpidia si fa. 



110 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

X. 
ALFIERI. 

According to Dr. Frederic Taber Cooper, Vittorio 
Alfieri (born 1749, died 1803) was the most important of the 
Italian dramatic poets. Matthew Arnold said that he was 
"a noble-minded, deeply-interested man, but a monotonous 
poet." There is, indeed, in all his works an almost total 
absence of the rich coloring, the golden glow and Tuscan 
softness of classic Italian speech. He studied assiduously to 
prune his style, almost to the point of harshness. His dramas 
are erected upon the classical models, and in them we some- 
times catch a distant echo of the thundering harp of Aeschylus. 

It was his thought that the theatre should be "a school 
in which men might learn to be free, brave and generous, 
inspired by true virtue, full of love for their country, and in 
all their passions enthusiastic, upright and magnanimous." 
Such he sought to make it. With him the love of freedom 
was a passion. His dream, like that of Petrarch and Machia- 
velli, was of a united Italy. But he hated king-craft in all 
its forms. His work bore fruit. No writer did more to achieve 
Italian unity. As Gioberti says, "the revival of civil order 
throughout the peninsula, the creation of a laic Italy, is due 
to Vittorio Alfieri, who, like a new Dante, was the true secular - 
izer of the spirit of the Italian people, and gave to it that 
strong impulse which still lives and bears fruit." 

When we think of Alfieri, observes another Italian critic, 
we must bring ourselves back to the age in which he lived. 
"The regeneration of Italian character," says Mariotti, 
"was yet merely intellectual and individual, and Alfieri was 
born from that class which was the last to feel the redeeming 
influence. Penetrated with the utter impossibility of dis- 
tinguishing himself by immediate action, he was forced to 
throw himself on the last resources of literature. He had 
exalted ideas of its duties and influence ; he had exalted notions 



ALFIERI 111 

of the dignity of man — an ardent, though a vague and ex- 
aggerated love of liberty, and of the manly virtues which it 
is wont to foster. He invaded the stage. He wished to effect 
upon his contemporaries that revolution which his own soul 
had undergone. He wished to wake them from their long 
lethargy of servitude; to see them thinking, willing, striving, 
resisting." Souls so obsessed with the spirit of liberty are not 
born to die. 

Alfieri published twenty-one tragedies, six comedies, one 
"tramelogedia" (a name invented by himself, and denoting a 
kind of tragi-comedy), one epic poem in four cantos, many 
lyrical poems, numerous sonnets and odes, and sixteen satires, 
besides poetical translations of Virgil and Terence, and parts 
of Aristophanes, Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus. He 
also wrote his autobiography, a work of remarkable excellence. 
His "Misogallo," a memorial of his fierce hatred of France, 
was published after his death. 

The inspiration of Alfieri is political rather than poetic. 
His more powerful works are all designed to show that the 
best government is one founded upon the consent of the 
governed. His hatred of arbitrary power was almost sublime 
in its intensity. The dedications of some of his dramas are 
as remarkable as anything contained in the plays. "The 
First Brutus" was dedicated to George Washington, then in 
a few months to become the first president of the United 
States. It reads as follows: 

'The name of the Deliverer of America alone can stand 
in the title page of the tragedy of the Deliverer of Rome. — 
To you, most excellent and most rare Citizen, I dedicate that; 
without first hinting at even a part of the so many praises 
due to yourself, which I now deem all comprehended in the 
sole mention of your name. Nor can this, my slight allusion, 
appear to you contaminated by adulation; since, not knowing 
you by person, and living disjoined from you by the immense 
ocean, we have but too emphatically nothing in common 



112 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

between us but the love of glory. Happy are you who have 
been able to build your glory on the sublime and eternal 
basis of love to your country, demonstrated by actions. I, 
though not born free, yet having abandoned in time my 
Lares, and for no other reason than that I might be able to 
write loftily of Liberty — I hope by this means at least to 
have proved what might have been my love of country, if I 
had indeed fortunately belonged to one that deserved the 
name. In this single respect, I do not think myself wholly 
unworthy to mingle my name with yours." 

The dedication of his "Agis" was to Charles I. of England 
— or, rather, to the shade of that unfortunate prince — and 
in it he excoriates the British monarch most unmercifully. 

A fair specimen of his stern and simple style is the follow- 
ing excerpt from "The First Brutus," where the body of the 
murdered Lucretia is brought into the Forum: 

"Brutus. — Then listen now to Brutus. The same dagger 
Which from her dying side he lately drew, 
Brutus now lifts; and to all Rome he swears 
That which first on her very dying form 
He swore already. — While I wear a sword, 
While vital air I breathe, in Rome henceforth 
No Tarquin e'er shall put his foot — I swear it; 
Nor the abominable name of king, 
Nor the authority, shall any man 
Ever again possess. — May the just gods 
Annihilate him here, if Brutus is not 
Lofty and true of heart! — Further I swear, 
Many as are the inhabitants of Rome, 
To make them equal, free, and citizens; 
Myself a citizen and nothing more. 
The laws alone shall have authority, 
And I will be the first to yield them homage. 



ALFIERI 113 

Noble sentiments these, and nobly expressed. If lacking 
in poetic beauty, they at least lack nothing in patriotic 
fervor. But beauty Alfieri does possess, and that, too, in a 
high degree; but it is the statuesque beauty of cold marble, 
graceful in repose; his lofty ideals, devoid of ornament, rigid 
and unbending as the sculptor's stone. In his essay on Lord 
Byron, Macaulay draws a parallel between Alfieri and Cowper. 
"In their hatred of meretricious ornament," says he, "and 
of what Cowper calls 'creamy smoothness,' they erred on the 
opposite side. Their style was too austere, their versification 
too harsh. * * * The intrinsic value of their poems is con- 
siderable. But the example which they set of mutiny against 
an absurd system was invaluable. The part which they per- 
formed was rather that of Moses than that of Joshua. They 
opened the house of bondage; but they did not enter the 
promised land." 

In Florence Alfieri met the Countess of Albany, wife of 
Charles Edward Stewart, the British Pretender, and won 
from Charles the heart of his queen. The infatuation was 
mutual, and after the death of the Pretender she lived with 
Alfieri until his death. His ashes, and those of the woman 
he loved, now repose in the church of Santa Croce, in Florence, 
between the tombs of Michelangelo and Machiavelli. 



PART FOUR 

GREAT SPANISH AND 
PORTUGUESE AUTHORS 



I. Lope De Vega. 

II. Cervantes. 

III. Camoens. 

IV. QUEVEDO. 

V. The Argensolas. 

VI. VlLLEGAS. 

VII. MONTALVO. 

VIII. Guillen De Castro. 

IX. Vicente. 

X. Calderon. 



( 115) 



In no modern society * * * has there been so great a number 
of men eminent at once in literature and in the pursuits of active 
life as Spain produced during the sixteenth century. Almost 
every distinguished writer was also distinguished as a soldier or a 
politician. Boscan bore arms with high reputation. Garcilaso 
de Vega, the author of the sweetest and most graceful pastoral 
poem of modern times, after a short but splendid military career, 
fell sword in hand at the head of a storming party. Alonzo de 
Ercilla bore a conspicuous part in the war of Arauco which he after- 
wards celebrated in one of the best heroic poems that Spain has 
produced. Hurtado de Mendoza, whose poems have been com- 
pared to those of Horace, and whose charming little novel is evi- 
dently the model of Gil Bias, has been handed down to us by 
history as one of the sternest of those iron proconsuls who were 
employed by the House of Austria to crush the lingering public 
spirit of Italy. Lope sailed in the Armada; Cervantes was 
wounded at Lepanto. 

— Macaulay. 



(116) 



LOPE DE VEGA 117 

I. 

LOPE DE VEGA. 

Lope Felix de Vega Carpio (born 1562, died 1635) was 
in many respects the most splendid figure of the Golden 
Age of Spanish literature. In the fecundity of his literary 
powers he surpasses every dramatic poet in the world's 
history. He is noted for the prodigal abundance of his over- 
flowing fancy, for his phenomenally rich imagination, and 
for an almost inconceivable exuberance of invention. He 
exceeded in popularity any writer in the Spanish language, 
and his fame has been equalled by few of any age or country. 

He was born at Madrid, and was educated there, at the 
Imperial College, and at the University of Alcala. Montalvan 
states that he could read both Latin and Spanish at the age 
of five. He began writing verses in early childhood. At 
fifteen he was in the army serving as a soldier against the 
Portuguese. Later he served in the Spanish Armada. Upon 
the defeat of the Armada he returned to Spain and wrote 
his "La Dragontea," in epic form, devoted largely to a fierce 
denunciation of Sir Francis Drake. While with the Armada 
he wrote the greater part of his "Hermosura de Angelica," an 
attempted continuation of Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," in 
which he vainly sought to vie with the great Italian. His 
poem contains eleven thousand lines, divided into twenty 
cantos. In nowise deterred by this failure, he wrote his 
"Divine Triumphs," in imitation of Petrarch, and again he 
failed. His next attempt to outdo Italian genius was in his 
"Jerusalem Conquered," a poem of 22,000 verses, in twenty 
books, in which he sought to equal or surpass the monu- 
mental work of Tasso, but again he failed. Indeed, none of 
his more ambitious poetical works are particularly happy. 
In 1630 he published "The Laurel of Apollo," a poem upon 
the order of Cervantes' "The Journey to Parnassus," in 
which he records the honors of nearly three hundred Spanish 



118 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

poets. This poem contains about seven thousand verses, 
and is distinctly disappointing. 

Lope de Vega's best poetry is to be found in some of the 
occasional sonnets, ballads and lyrics which are scattered 
throughout his works. Thus, in "The Shepherds of Bethle- 
hem," in five books, we find these rare and dainty lines in a 
lullaby sung by the Madonna to her child, sleeping beneath 
the palms, and they are as exquisite, colorful and tender as a 
painting by Murillo: 

Holy angels and blest, 

Through these palms as ye sweep, 

Hold their branches at rest, 
For my babe is asleep. 

And ye Bethlehem palm trees, 

As stormy winds rush 
In tempest and fury, 

Your angry noise hush ; — 
Move gently, move gently, 

Restrain your wild sweep ; 
Hold your branches at rest, — 

My babe is asleep. 

Here is genuine lyrical art. Another specimen, in a different 
strain, but with the same soulful touch, is the following from 
"Tome Burguillos," translated by Longfellow: 

How oft my guardian angel gently cried, 

"Soul from thy casement look, and thou shalt see 
How He persists to knock and wait for thee!" 
And, O! how often to that voice of sorrow, 

"To-morrow we will open," I replied; 

And when the morrow came I answered still, 

"To-morrow." 

But it was in the field of dramatic art that Lope de Vega 
found his most congenial work, and here his talents shone 



LOPE DE VEGA 119 

with undimmed splendor during the greater part of his long 
and active life. The number of his plays cannot now be 
certainly determined, but it is known to exceed 1,500, and 
is probably nearer 2,000, in addition to several hundred autos 
or one-act religious plays. His plays may be grouped in three 
classes: (1) Spiritual plays, including autos, and "Mystery" 
and "Morality" plays; (2) heroic and historical comedies and 
tragedies of Spanish life and history, and dramas upon classical 
subjects; and (3) dramas of every-day life, the famous "cloak 
and sword" pieces — capa y espada. 

Bouterwek, one of the great German authorities on 
Spanish literature, says: "Arithmetical calculations have 
been employed in order to arrive at a just estimate of Lope 
de Vega's facility in poetic composition. According to his 
own testimony, he wrote, on an average, five sheets a day. 
It has therefore been computed that the number of sheets he 
composed during his life must have amounted to 133,225; 
and that, allowing for the deduction of a small portion of 
prose, Lope de Vega must have written upward of 21,300,000 
verses. Nature would have over-stepped her bounds and 
produced the miraculous had Lope de Vega, along with 
this rapidity of invention, attained perfection in any depart- 
ment of literature.' 

In his very interesting biography of Lope de Vega, Lord 
Holland observes: "The most singular circumstance attend- 
ing his verse is the frequency and difficulty of the tasks he 
imposes on himself. At every step we meet with acrostics, 
echoes and compositions of that perverted and laborious 
kind, from attempting which another author would be deterred 
by the trouble of the undertaking, if not by the little real 
merit attending the achievement. * * * But Lope made a 
parade of his power over the vocabulary; he was not contented 
with displaying the various order in which he could dispose 
the syllables arid marshal the rhymes of his language, but 
he also prided himself upon the celerity with which he brought 



120 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

them to go through the most whimsical but the most difficult 
evolutions. He seems to have been partial to difficulties for 
the gratification of surmounting them." 

Cervantes calls him "a prodigy of nature." Many 
times he was known to write an entire drama within the 
space of twenty-four hours. Not less astounding than the 
prodigious volume of his work is the amazing complexity 
of his plots. He delights in leading his characters through the 
most intricate mazes of intrigue, flanked by counter-plots 
and under-plots in endless variety. His dramatic style is 
fresh, forceful and pleasing and his bewildering ingenuity 
is a charm that never fails. Ticknor, in his History of Spanish 
Literature, says that the droll, the variously witty gracioso, 
the full-blown parody of the heroic characters of the play, 
the dramatic picaro, is solely the creation of Lope de Vega. 
He gave it to the Spanish stage, thence it passed to the French, 
and then to all the other theatres of modern times. He 
was likewise the first to accord to woman her proper place in 
the drama. "Hitherto the woman had been allotted a second- 
ary and incidental part, ludicrous in the comedies and skits, 
sentimental in the set piece. Lope, the expert in gallantry, 
in manners, in observation, placed her in her true setting as 
an ideal, as the mainspring of dramatic motive and of chival- 
rous conduct." 

Lope de Vega ignored the classical dramatic unities, and 
often wrote in utter defiance of all the rules of dramatic art. 
"When I am going to write a play," he says, "I lock up all 
precepts, and cast Terence and Plautus out of my study, lest 
they should cry out against me, as truth is wont to do, even 
from such dumb volumes; for I write according to the art 
invented by those who sought the applause of the multitude, 
whom it is but just to humor in their folly, since it is they who 
pay for it." He says that he wrote only six plays that did 
not "gravely offend against the rules." He does not seek to 
inculcate any general program of morality, but merely depicts 



LOPE DE VEGA 121 

manners as he finds them. He does not seek to elevate the 
popular taste, but merely caters to it. "Keep the explanation 
of the story doubtful till the last scene," he advises; "for, 
as soon as the public know how it will end, they turn their 
faces to the door and their backs to the stage." Lope knew 
his audience. 

Lope de Vega is especially felicitous in some of his lighter 
pieces, as in "El Azero de Madrid," from which Moliere 
afterward borrowed his "Medecin Malgre Lui." Lope's 
portrayal of the old Spanish duenna, as she accompanies her 
ward from church, and attempts to prevent her speaking to 
her waiting lover, is characteristic: 

Theodora: Show more of gentleness and modesty; — 
Of gentleness in walking quietly, 
Of modesty in looking only down 
Upon the earth you tread. 

Belisa: Tis what I do. 

Theodora : What? When you're looking straight toward 
that man? 

Belisa: Did you not bid me look upon the earth? 
And what is he but just a bit of it? 

Theodora: I said the earth whereon you tread, my niece. 

Belisa: But that whereon I tread is hidden quite 
With my own petticoat and walking dress. 

Theodora: Words such as these become no well bred 
maid. 
But, by your mother's blessed memory, 
I'll put an end to all your pretty tricks; — 
What? You look back at him again? 

Belisa: Who? I? 

Theodore : Yes, you ; — and make him secret signs besides. 

Belisa: Not I. 'Tis only that you troubled me 

With teasing questions and perverse replies, 
So that I stumbled, and looked round to see 
Who would prevent my fall. 



122 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

And so the dialogue proceeds in its airy flippancy and frolic- 
some humor — always Castilian, and always portraying per- 
fectly to delighted audiences the manners of the time. 

After the death of his first wife, Lope de Vega married 
again. Upon the death of his second wife he entered the 
priesthood, and became an officer of the Spanish Inquisition. 
But he did not cease writing. When the theatre was sup- 
pressed by royal order, Lope resumed his early practice of 
writing morality and religious dramas. He was idolized by 
the Spanish populace, and when he died the ceremonies 
attending his obsequies occupied nine days. 

No man of letters was ever better paid for his work than 
was Lope de Vega. Montalvan says that he received for his 
plays eighty thousand ducats.. Besides other benefactions, 
the Duke of Sessa alone gave him, at various times, twenty- 
four thousand ducats, and a sinecure of three hundred more 
per annum. But Lope was prodigal toward his friends, was 
charitable to a fault, and was almost penniless when he died. 



II. 

CERVANTES, 



Fifteen years before Lope de Vega first saw the light, there 
was born, at Alcola de Henares, in October, 1547, the greatest 
literary genius of the Spanish race, Miguel de Cervantes 
Saavedra, a victim of adversity, the butt of sorrow and the 
child of woe; but who for all that, as Carlyle said, was the 
author of "our joyfullest modern book," and, as Moore said 
of Sheridan, 

"Whose humor, as gay as the fire-fly's light, 

Play'd round every subject, and shone as it play'd; — 

Whose wit in the combat as gentle, as bright, 
Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade." 



CERVANTES 123 

Cervantes was among the manliest, the kindliest and 
gentlest of men. Whether we see him in fierce battle with 
the Turks in the great sea-fight of Lepanto, for the greater 
glory of God and exaltation of Spain; or behold his stricken 
form, sorely wounded and maimed for life, languishing in 
one of the crude military hospitals of that age; or follow him 
in his five terrible years of Moorish slavery in Algiers; or 
view him through the bars of a Spanish jail, undergoing sen- 
tence for another's fault; always and everywhere we find him 
stout of heart, magnanimous and true, without taint of bitter- 
ness in his soul, and bravely smiling through his tears. 

In 1584, at the age of thirty-seven, and immediately 
following the publication of his "Galatea," — written, it is 
said, to win favor in the eyes of the woman he loved — he was 
married to a young lady of good family, but who, like Cer- 
vantes, was poor, and who faithfully shared his hardships 
during the remainder of his life. Soon afterward he turned 
to authorship for a livelihood, and devoted his talents to the 
stage. But his dramatic work, as a whole, was far from 
satisfactory, and his labors brought small financial return. 
Even the names of several of his plays are lost. The best play 
of Cervantes is his "Numancia," a tragedy founded upon the 
fate of Numantia, whose four thousand men had resisted the 
onslaught of eighty thousand Roman troops. The town was 
reduced by famine, and when the Romans entered not a 
single Numantian was found alive. This play has elicited 
praise from A. W. von Schlegel, Shelly and Goethe. Bouter- 
wek affirms that it justifies the opinion that, in different 
circumstances, Cervantes might have been the Aeschylus of 
Spain. 

Forced by scant financial success to abandon the drama, 
Cervantes now repaired to Seville, to engage in commercial 
pursuits but with indifferent success. For a time he collected 
revenues for the government, but owing to the default of 
another he was convicted and imprisoned because of a shortage 



124 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

in his accounts. He then engaged to collect the rents for a 
monastery in La Mancha, but the debtors not only declined 
payment but threw him into jail. Here, as tradition has it, 
he began his immortal story of Don Quixote. Next we find 
him in Valladolid, where, a stranger having been killed near 
his dwelling, he was placed in prison pending the investigation. 
But in the midst of all his struggles and privations he was 
able to continue his great work, and the First Part of his 
Don Quixote, licensed in 1604 at Valladolid, was published 
at Madrid in 1605. It was his first genuine literary success, 
and he was now fifty-eight years of age. Returning to 
Madrid, he published his twelve "Moral Tales," which have 
always been favorites in Spain, but are little known abroad. 
In literary grace and style they probably surpass Don Quixote, 
but are not its equal as works of invention. In 1614 he 
published his "Journey to Parnassus," after the manner of 
the Italian satire of the same name by Cesare Caporali. 
But the poem is almost as worthless as the one in the same 
strain by Lope de Vega. At its close he appends a humorous 
dialogue attacking the actors who refused to present his 
dramas. 

Cervantes now renewed his efforts at the drama. He suc- 
ceeded no better than before. In 1615, ten years after the 
publication of the First Part, he published the Second Part 
of his Don Quixote. Failing health now added its burdens to 
those of poverty. Death was drawing near. But he had 
faced it on many a bloody field. He did not quail before it 
now. He met it smiling, and unafraid. Realizing that his 
end was fast approaching, he rushed his romance of "Persiles 
and Sigismunda" to completion, as a last offering to the Count 
de Lemos, who had befriended him. "And so," he concludes 
in the preface to his last work, "farewell to jesting, farewell 
my merry humors, farewell my gay friends, for I feel that 
I am dying, and have no desire but soon to see you happy in 
the other life." 



CERVANTES 125 

On April 2, 1616, he entered the order of the Franciscan 
friars. On April 18th he received the sacrament of extreme 
unction. The next day he wrote a dedication of his last work, 
"marked, to an extraordinary degree," as one critic says, 
"with his natural humor, and with the solemn thoughts that 
became his situation." On April 23, 1616, this brave and 
blithesome spirit passed away — on the same day that Shake- 
speare died, if the English and Spanish calendars were the 
same. 

In 1835 a bronze statue of Cervantes was placed in the 
Plaza del Estamento at Madrid. But more lasting than 
bronze is the monument which he has erected to the splendor 
of his own genius and the glory of Spanish letters, in his 
narrative of the adventures of the Sorrowful Knight of La 
Mancha, the most singular book of humor that the world has 
ever known. The "Don Quixote" is wholly unique. "The 
most experienced and fastidious judges," says Macaulay, 
"are amazed at the perfection of that art which extracts 
unextinguishable laughter from the greatest of human calami- 
ties without once violating the reverence due to it; at that 
discriminating delicacy of touch which makes a character 
exquisitely ridiculous without impairing its worth, its grace, 
or its dignity." 

"Cervantes, Shakespeare and Goethe form the triumvirate 
of poets who in the three great divisions of poetry have 
achieved the greatest success," says Heinrich Heine. Henry 
Hallam says that Don Quixote "is to Europe in general what 
Ariosto is to Italy and Shakespeare to England; the one book 
to which the slightest allusions may be made without affec- 
tation, but not missed without discredit." "Numerous 
translations," he adds, "and countless editions of them, in 
every language, bespeak its adaptation to mankind; no critic 
has been paradoxical enough to withhold his admiration, no 
reader has ventured to confess a want of relish for that in 



126 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

which the young and old, in every climate, have, age after 
age, taken delight." 

M. Sismondi, Prof. Bouterwek and Walter Savage Landor 
are among those critics who take Don Quixote seriously. 
There are always those who profess to discover in the works of 
genius some hidden motive, some occult purpose, some sub- 
cutaneous meaning. But we do not see why Cervantes may 
not be taken at his word. He says he "had no other desire 
than to render abhorred of men the false and absurd stories 
contained in books of chivalry." Certainly there was ample 
need of this reform. Spanish love of chivalric romance 
amounted to an obsession among all classes. In 1553 these 
romances were prohibited by law from being sold in the 
American colonies. In 1555 the Spanish Cortes demanded 
that all such publications be suppressed. But the passion 
had struck its roots deeply. It had become a national vice 
against which legal acts and edicts hurled themselves in vain. 
But the vogue of idle and superstitious tales, which had 
persisted beneath the frown of government, melted away 
before the magic smile of Cervantes. No more books of 
chivalry made their appearance after the publication of Don 
Quixote in 1605 — "a solitary instance," as Ticknor says, "of 
the power of genius to destroy, by a single well-timed blow, 
an entire department, and that, too, a flourishing and favored 
one, in the literature of a great and proud nation." In 
accomplishing this, his quaint and wholesome humor has 
placed the universal spirit of humanity under tribute to his 
genius. He gave to the modern world, moreover, its first 
classical specimen of the "single-track mind" operating in 
all the transcendental tomfoolery of its exaggerated egoism, 
the precursor of that international paranoia grandiosa which, 
garbed in the guise of a meddlesome, misguided and spurious 
altruism, has been the scourge and plague of more recent times^ 

A most interesting feature of Don Quixote is the great 
number of its phrases which have since grown into general use 



CERVANTES 127 

as proverbs; in which respect Cervantes strongly resembles 
Rabelais, although his humor is of a more innocent and whole- 
some character than that of the French author. A single 
phrase of this classical Spanish humor will show both its 
quaintness and its power: "Everyone is as God made him, 
and often a great deal worse." (Don Quixote, XL, 5.) 

Spain's latest expression of gratitude toward her most 
gifted son occurred on March 6, 1920, when King Alfonso 
inaugurated a "Cervantes Hall" in the National Library at 
Madrid, in which a collection of copies of all the editions of 
Don Quixote, numbering more than 600, will be kept; and 
twenty tablets, representing subjects of Cervantes' writings, 
painted by Monoz Degrain, will decorate the hall. The 
director of the Biblioteca, Don Francis Rodriguez Marin, 
furnishes some interesting facts concerning the various 
Cervantes editions, the last census of which was made by 
Martin del Rio, in 1916, when it was ascertained that there 
were 637, including the abridged editions. These were dis- 
tributed according to languages, as follows: Castilian, 252; 
French, 121; English, 115; German, 49; Dutch, 22; Italian, 19; 
Swedish, 10; Russian, 10; Portuguese, 6; Polish, 6; Hungarian, 
5; Catalan, 3; Greek, 3; Danish, 3; Bohemian, 1; Croatian, 1; 
Hindustani, 1, and Polyglot, 1. Since this census was made 
other editions have been discovered and acquired, so that 
the total now reaches 648. One of the recently acquired 
editions is Norwegian, while another is Hebrew-German, 
the gift of Dr. Yahuda. Two others editions are in Japanese, 
the gift of a cultured Spaniard, Don Juan C. Cebrian, of San 
Francisco, California. 



128 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

III. 

CAMOENS. 

The greatest name in the literary annals of Portugal is 
that of Luiz de Camoens, author of the "Lusiad," an epic 
poem which ranks among the really great literary creations 
of the world, and which has securely won its place in what 
Goethe calls the "welt-literatur." Camoens wrote in both 
Portuguese and Spanish, but his fame is erected upon his 
masterpiece, "Os Lusiadas" — literally, The Lusitanians — 
which takes for its theme the voyage of Vasco de Gama 
around the Cape of Good Hope, and incidentally narrates 
the chief glories of the people of Portugal, the Lusitanian 
people. 

In point of priority of publication, Camoens' "Lusiad" 
is the first great epic of modern times, having preceded the 
"Jerusalem" of Tasso who flourished at about the same time; 
although, to be sure, critics are agreed that his work is inferior 
to the Italian masterpiece. In the opinion of Hallam, 
Camoens, in point of fame, "ranks among the poets of the 
South immediately after the first names of Italy; nor is the 
distinctive character that belongs to the poetry of the south- 
ern languages anywhere more fully perceived than in the 
Lusiad." 

Probably the best known of the English translations of 
the Lusiad is that of Mickle. But, as Southey has remarked: 
"In every language there is a magic of words as untranslatable 
as the Sesame in the Arabian tale; you may retain the mean- 
ing, but, if the words be changed, the spell is lost. The magic 
has its effect only upon those to whom the language is as 
familiar as their mother-tongue, hardly, indeed, upon any 
but those to whom it is really such. Camoens possesses it 
in perfection; it is his peculiar excellence." 

This peculiarity of style is possessed by Camoens in 
common with other great writers. Indeed, it is one of the 



CAMOENS 129 

true marks of literary greatness. In fact, Coleridge gives 
as "the infallible test of a blameless style," "its untranslat- 
ableness in words of the same language without injury to 
the meaning." In this, as in many another canon of criticism, 
Matthew Arnold was right: "Verse translation may give 
whatever of charm is in the soul and talent of the translator 
himself, but never the specific charm of the verse and poet 
translated." Dante gires us the truth of the whole matter 
in his "Convito," Book 1, chapter 7: "And therefore, let 
each one know that nothing which is harmonized by the bond 
of the Muse can be translated from one language into another 
without breaking all its sweetness and harmony." 

In addition to his epic, Camoens is the author of numerous 
odes, elegies, sonnets, satires and epistles, besides three 
comedies — "King Seleucus," "Filidemo" and another modeled 
upon Plautus, "Os Amphitryoes," the same great model so 
often imitated in England, Germany and France. Some of 
his lyrics are written with much tenderness and beauty, and 
with a facile sweetness of expression, a kind of languorous 
softness and melancholy mildness which are well portrayed 
in this bit of mellifluous verse on a concealed but unhappy 
passion : 

De dentro tengo mi mal, 

Que de fora no ay senal. 
Mi nueva y dulce querella 

Es invisible a la gente: 

El alma sola la siente, 

Qu' el cuerpo no es dino della; 

Como la viva sentella 

S' encubre en el pedernal, 

De dentro tengo mi mal. 

Within, within, my sorrow lives, 
But outwardly no token gives. 

All young and gentle in the soul, 
All hidden from men's eyes, 



130 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Deep, deep within it lies, 

And scorns the body's low control. 
As in the flint the hidden spark 
Gives outwardly no sign or mark, 

Within, within, my sorrow lives. 

Another characteristic specimen is his beautiful Spanish 
ballad, beginning, — 

Irme quiero, madre, 
A aquella galera, 
Con el marino 
A ser marinera. 
I long to go, dear mother mine, 

Aboard yon galley fair, 
With that young sailor that I love, 
His sailor life to share. 

"Most of his sonnets," says the German scholar Bouter- 
wek, in his History of Portuguese Literature, "have love for 
their theme, and they are of very unequal merit; some are 
full of Petrarchic tenderness and grace, and moulded with 
classic correctness; others are impetuous and romantic, or 
disfigured by false learning, or full of tedious pictures of the 
conflicts of passion with reason. Upon the whole, however, 
no Portuguese poet has so correctly seized the character of the 
sonnet as Camoens." Notwithstanding faults that are 
obvious, the "Lusiad" contains beauties which distinguish 
it clearly as the work of a master. There is a certain clarity 
of narration and transparency of style which the reader can- 
not fail to note. There are likewise bold and lofty flights of 
imagination, such as that which calls forth the genius of the 
river Ganges, appearing to King Emanuel of Portugal, in a 
dream, inviting that Prince to discover its secret origins; and, 
in the fifth canto, the noble concept of the "Spirit of the Cape," 
the guardian genius of those uncharted seas, rising in tempests 
from the deep, to warn the daring mariners, as they rounded 



QUEVEDO 131 

Good Hope, that they should proceed no farther. This is 
said to be one of the most celebrated and striking figures to 
be found in modern literature. 

Camoens lived from 1524 to 1579. His life was divided 
'twixt love and war. In his early manhood he was welcomed 
at the court of Lisbon. Here he conceived an attachment for 
one of the Queen's ladies of honor. He was banished from 
the court and separated from the lady he loved. From that 
time forth he spent the greater part of his life in foreign wars, 
a voluntary exile from the land he cherished and which his 
great works have so signally honored. Returning after years 
of wandering, he presented his noble epic to King Sebastian, 
and was given a paltry pension of about twenty dollars! He 
lived for a few years with his old mother, and then passed 
away unnoticed, in a public hospital. 

His life and adventures were dramatized in 1837 by 
Miinch-Bellinghausen, an Austrian dramatist, author of 
"Ingomar" and "Wildfeuer," who wrote under the pseudonym 
of Friederich Halm. 



IV. 
QUEVEDO. 

Born at Madrid in 1580, a contemporary of Lope de Vega 
and Cervantes, Francisco Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas was 
the first great satirist of modern times. He was a man of 
profound erudition, being deeply versed in both civil and 
canon law, mathematics and medicine, a graduate in theology, 
and a master of Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin and Italian. 
He was a cripple, and also suffered from defective eyesight. 

In early life he fought a duel in defense of a woman, and 
slew his opponent, who happened to be a person of rank. He 
then fled to Sicily, and entered the service of the viceroy, 
the Duke of Ossuna, for whom he conducted many important 
diplomatic negotiations. Later he became minister of 



132 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

finance at Naples, and further distinguished himself in diplom- 
acy, conducting successful negotiations with Savoy, Venice 
and Rome. Quevedo discharged all his public offices with 
marked credit to himself and his country. But with the fall 
of his patron, the great Duke of Ossuna, he was exiled. 

When again recalled to favor at the court of Spain, 
Quevedo refused office, declining, respectively, the posts of 
Secretary of State and Ambassador to Genoa, having de- 
termined to give himself up wholly to letters. Suspected of 
having written some anonymous verses against the king, he 
was suddenly seized and spirited away to prison, where he 
languished for several years, although he was known to be 
innocent of the trifling charge against him. His persecution 
was due to the implacable enmity of the cruel Duke of Olivares, 
to whom he wrote a pathetic letter in which he said: "No 
clemency can add many years to my life; no rigor can take 
many away." His health, indeed, was broken beyond all 
hope of cure. But he did not secure his liberty until Olivares 
was driven from power. 

Quevedo wrote everything, from metaphysics to Gypsey 
ballads. He suffered much, and he suffered innocently; and 
he died a ruined, broken, embittered and disappointed man. 
On his deathbed he requested that nearly all his works be 
suppressed. His works are published in eleven volumes, 
three of poetry and eight of prose. He translated Epictetus, 
parts of Plutarch, Seneca, and Anacreon, and wrote much in 
the manner of Juvenal and Persius. 

In addition to his acquired culture, Quevedo was a man 
of extraordinary natural endowments. Some of his religious 
and love poems are full of beauty and tenderness. But his 
principal works are in prose, and his satirical prose works are 
his best. His "Paul the Sharper" has been translated into 
English, French, German and Italian. His "Visions" have 
won for him a world-wide fame. An English version, by 
L'Estrange, won great popularity in the seventeenth century. 



QUEVEDO 133 

Quevedo hurled the shafts of his cutting ridicule against 
the current literary affectation known as "Cultismo," thenat 
the height of its folly. With terrible bitterness he inveighed 
against the vices of the times. But he lacked Cervantes' fine 
sense of the ridiculous. He was endowed with marvelous 
wit, but there was too much bitterness in his soul to develop 
a kindly sense of humor. His truculent sarcasm, galling 
satire and biting irony could infuriate but it could not destroy. 
The following is from his ' 'Vision" of the Day of Judgment: 

"But when it was fairly understood of all that this was 
the Day of Judgment, it was worth seeing how the voluptuous 
tried to avoid having their eyes found for them, that they 
need not bring into court witnesses against themselves, — 
how the malicious tried to avoid their own tongues, and how 
robbers and assassins seemed willing to wear out their feet 
running away from their hands. And turning partly round, 
I saw one miser asking another whether, because the dead 
were to rise that day, certain money-bags of his must also 
rise. I should have laughed heartily at this if I had not, 
on the other side, pitied the eagerness with which a great 
rout of notaries rushed by, flying from their own ears, in 
order to avoid hearing what awaited them, though none 
succeeded in escaping, except those who in this world had lost 
their ears as thieves, which, owing to the neglect of justice, 
was by no means the majority. But what I most wondered 
at was to see the bodies of two or three shop-keepers, that 
had put on their souls wrong-side out, and crowded all five 
of their senses under the nails of their right hands.' 



134 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

V. 
THE ARGENSOLAS. 

Seldom has the literature of any nation presented the 
work of two brothers attaining such eminence as the Argensola 
brothers, Bartolomeo Leonardo (born 1566, died 1633) and 
Lupercio Leonardo (born 1565, died 1613), both of whom 
reached high rank in Spanish letters. 

Bartolomeo was almoner to the Empress Maria, widow 
of Maximilian II., and when his brother Lupercio died he 
took his place as historiographer of Aragon. Pope Paul II. 
appointed him canon of the Cathedral in Saragossa. The 
following sonnet on "Providence" (translation by Herbert) 
is in his characteristic manner : 

"Parent of good! Since all thy laws are just, 
Say, why permits thy judging Providence 
Oppression's hand to bow meek Innocence, 
And gives prevailing strength to Fraud and Lust; 
Who steels with stubborn force the arm unjust, 
That proudly wars against Omnipotence? 
Who bids thy faithful sons, that reverence 
Thine holy will, be humbled in the dust?" — 
Amid the din of Joy fair Virtue sighs, 
While the fierce conqueror binds his impious head 
With laurel, and the car of triumph rolls. — 
Thus I, when radiant 'fore my wondering eyes 
A heavenly spirit stood, and smiling said: 
"Blind moralist! is Earth the sphere of souls?" 

Lupercio wrote three tragedies which won high praise 
from Cervantes, and was also the author of many canzones, 
satires and sonnets, which have been published with the 
poems of his brother. "Both brothers," says Ticknor, "are 



THE ARGENSOLAS 135 

to be placed high in the list of Spanish lyric poets; next, 
perhaps, after the great masters. The elder shows, on the 
whole, more original power; but he left only half as many 
poems as his brother did." Speaking of the purity of their 
style Lope de Vega says: "It seems as though they had 
come from Aragon to reform Castilian verse." The genius 
of the brothers was much alike; scarcely distinguishable in 
their work, as the English critic, Haljam, thinks; but the 
German Bouterwek assigns a higher place to Bartolomeo, 
and in this view he is supported by Dieze, another great 
German authority, who thinks that the eulogy of Nicolas 
Antonio on these brothers, although in rather extravagant 
terms, is fully merited by them. 

Lupercio's "Mary Magdalen," which follows (translation 
by Bryant) is one of the finest specimens of Spanish lyrical 
verse : 

Blessed, yet sinful one, and broken-hearted! 
The crowd are pointing at the thing forlorn 
In wonder and in scorn. 
Thou weepest days of innocence departed, 

Thou weepest, and thy tears have power to move 
The Lord to pity and to love. 

The greatest of thy follies is forgiven 

Even for the least of all the tears that shine 
On that pale cheek of thine. 
Thou didst kneel down to Him who came from heaven, 
Evil and ignorant, and thou shalt rise 
Holy, and pure, and wise. 

It is not much that to the fragrant blossom 
The ragged briar should change; the bitter fir 
Distil Arabia's myrrh ; 
Nor that, upon the wintry desert's bosom, 

The harvest should rise plenteous, and the swain 
Bear home abundant grain. 



136 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

But come and see the bleak and barren mountains 
Thick to their top with roses ; come and see 
Leaves on the dry, dead tree: 
The perished plant, set out by living fountains, 
Grows fruitful, and its beauteous branches rise 
Forever toward the skies. 



VI. 

VILLEGAS. 



A follower of the Argensolas, and whose youth had moved 
with admiration in their footsteps, as he often boasted, was 
Estevan Manuel de Villegas, called by Dieze "the Spanish 
Anacreon, the poet of the Graces." He is, as this German 
authority says, "one of the best lyric poets of Spain, excellent 
in the various styles he has performed, but, above all, in his 
odes and songs. His original poems are full of genius. His 
translations of Horace and Anacreon might often pass for 
original. Few surpass him in harmony of verse." (Geschichte 
der Spanischen Dichtkunst, p. 210.) 

Villegas wrote much of his verse before he had reached the 
age of fourteen, and published the greater part of it before he 
was twenty-one. Owing to his youthful conceit and indis- 
cretion he made the mistake of attacking Cervantes, Quevedo 
and Lope de Vega in his very first edition. This unfortunate 
bit of impertinence plagued him throughout his life and has 
had a tendency to mar his reputation ever since. 

Villegas was born in 1596. He was married in 1626, and 
thereafter practically abandoned the field of letters for the less 
congenial profession of the law, which he was obliged to follow 
for a livelihood. In his mature years it appears that he 
attempted little or nothing worth while in the field of poetry, 
although he prepared a few essays on ancient authors and 
translated Boethius' "Consolations of Philosophy" into what 



VILLEGAS 137 

is generally regarded as a classical specimen of Castilian prose. 
He died in 1669, after a life of poverty, and without having 
achieved the literary honors which he coveted, or attained 
the material resources he so sorely needed. He must have 
known, instinctively, the quality and value of his work, and 
had he been content to herald it forth with somewhat less of 
bravado, his own generation might have recognized his worth, 
and he might not have died an unhappy and a disappointed 
man. An author cannot speak for his work; his work must 
speak for him. 

We have nothing in English which can be at all compared 
with his imitations of Anacreon. His imitations of Horace and 
Catullus and Petrarch are not less amazing. Bouterwek, a 
recognized authority, declares: 'The graceful luxuriance 
of the poetry of Villegas has no parallel in modern literature; 
and, generally speaking, no modern writer has so well suc- 
ceeded in blending the spirit of ancient poetry with the 
modern." 

In his "History of Spanish Literature," Mr. Ticknor thus 
speaks of Villegas' imitations of Anacreon : 'They give such a 
faithful impression of the native sweetness of Anacreon as is 
not easily found elsewhere in modern literature." The reader 
will share with Mr. Ticknor his conclusion: "We close the 
volume of Villegas, therefore, with sincere regret that he, 
who, in his boyhood, could write poetry so beautiful, — poetry 
so imbued with the spirit of antiquity, and yet so full of the 
tenderness of modern feeling; so classically exact, and yet so 
fresh and natural, — should have survived its publication 
above forty years without finding an interval when the cares 
and disappointments of the world permitted him to return 
to the occupations that made his youth happy, and that have 
preserved his name for a posterity of which, when he first 
lisped in numbers, he could hardly have had a serious thought." 



138 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

VII. 

MONTALVO. 

To Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo, governor of the city of 
Medina del Campo, we owe the earliest extant version of the 
"Amadis de Gaula," which during a period of two hundred 
years was the most popular prose romance of Christendom. 
He translated the tale from the Portuguese between 1492 and 
1504, and added to it a composition of his own, the fanciful 
story of "Esplandian," a son of Amadis. Montalvo flourished 
in the latter part of the fifteenth century. Beyond these 
facts, little or nothing is known of him. 

Although French and English scholars have claimed for 
their respective literatures the honor of originating the 
Amadis, those honors belong to Spain and Portugal. Ayala, 
the Spanish Chancellor who was the first Spanish translator 
of Livy, a cautious, truthful, learned and sagacious man, 
mentions the Amadis. Ayala died in 1407. Zurara, keeper 
of the Archives of Portugal in 1454, says that "the book of 
Amadis" was "made entirely at the pleasure of one man, 
called Vasco De Lobeira, in the time of King Don Ferdinand, 
all the things in the said book being invented by its author." 
Lobeira died in 1403. His manuscript is now no longer 
extant, and we know his work only through Montalvo, his 
Spanish translator. The Portuguese manuscript was known 
to exist in the archives of the Dukes of Arveiro, at Lisbon, as 
late as the year 1750. But from that time we know nothing 
further in regard to it, and it was possibly lost in the Lisbon 
earthquake, which destroyed the palace of the family of 
Arveiro in 1755. 

The Amadis was translated into Italian as early as 1546. 
In 1560 Bernardo Tasso, father of the great author of the 
"Jerusalem Delivered," published his poem "Amadigi," 
which was made up almost entirely of materials taken from 
the Spanish romance. The brilliant author of the Jerusalem 



MONTALVO 139 

himself likewise praised the great Spanish and Portuguese 
story in the following language: "In the opinion of many, 
and particularly in my own opinion, it is the most beautiful, 
and perhaps the most profitable, story of its kind that can 
be read, because, in its sentiment and tone, it leaves all others 
behind it, and, in the variety of its incidents, yields to none 
written before or since." Six editions of the Amadis were 
published in Italy in less than thirty years. In France the 
first translation was published in 1540, followed by other 
editions without number. The first English translation was 
in 1619. 

Montalvo intimates that his Spanish rendition of the 
romance is much better than its Portuguese original. At any 
rate, it is a compact work of the imagination, not military 
like the story of Charlemagne, nor religious like the story 
of Arthur and the Holy Grail, but merely delineating the 
trials, the adventures and the virtues of a perfect knight, 
the currents of whose life and love are crossed by innumerable 
giants, magicians and wicked knights, but over all whom he 
finally triumphs and wins the hand and heart of his beloved 
Oriana. 

The Amadis is written in simple style, and often exhibits 
passages of great tenderness and beauty, such as those which 
developed the love of Oriana and the "Child of the Sea." 
What Cervantes thought of the Amadis is recorded in Part I. 
of Don Quixote. When the barber, the housekeeper and the 
curate began to expurgate the library of Don Quixote, the 
first book taken from the shelf was the Amadis de Gaula. 

" 'There is something mysterious about this matter,' 
said the Curate; 'for, as I have heard, this was the first book 
of knight errantry that was printed in Spain, and all the others 
have had their origin and source here, so that, as the arch- 
heretic of so mischievous a sect, I think he should, without 
a hearing, be condemned to the fire.' 'No, sir,' said the barber, 
'for I, too, have heard that it is the best of all the books of 



140 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

its kind that have been written, and therefore, for its singu- 
larity, it ought to be forgiven.' 'That is the truth,' answered 
the curate, 'and so let us spare it for the present.' " A decision 
which, upon the whole, as one critic observes, has been con- 
firmed by posterity, "and precisely for the reason that Cer- 
vantes assigned." 

Montalvo's continuation of the Amadis in the story of 
Esplandian is devoid of interest. Other additions were made 
by later authors, for the most part worthless, until the Amadis 
stories reached the immense proportion of twenty-six books. 
And then Duverdier capped the climax by bringing the 
broken threads of these stories together in seven volumes, 
entitled "Roman des Romanes," — Romance of Romances. 
So ends the history of the Portuguese type of Amadis of Gaul, 
an eminent authority on Spanish literature remarks, as it 
was originally presented to the world in the Spanish romances 
of chivalry; "a fiction which, considering the passionate 
admiration it so long excited, and the influence it has, with 
little merit of its own, exercised on the poetry and romances 
of modern Europe ever since, is a phenomenon that has no 
parallel in literary history." 



VIII. 
GUILLEN DE CASTRO. 

Born of a noble family in Valencia in 1569, in his native 
city Guillen de Castro early became distinguished as a man 
of letters. His life, however, was not wholly devoted to 
literature. At one time he held a place in the government 
of the viceroy of Naples. At another time we find him serv- 
ing as a captain of Cavalry. Cervantes speaks of him as one 
of the popular dramatic authors of his day. He died in 
poverty in 1631. 

Guillen de Castro was a personal friend of Lope de Vega, 
whose manner of dramatic composition he followed. Aside 



GUILLEN DE CASTRO 141 

from twenty-seven or twenty-eight of his dramas, very few 
of his works have been published. He dramatized a part 
of "Don Quixote," and this drama was translated into French 
as early as 1638, when it was brought on the French stage 
by Guerin de Bouscal. His "Santa Barbara" was imitated 
by Calderon in the "Wonder-working Magician." 

But Castro's chief service to the literature of Europe 
lay in his adaptation and dramatization of the old anonymous 
metrical romance of "The Cid." This drama is entitled 
"Las Mocedades del Cid"— The Youth, or Youthful Ad- 
ventures, of the Cid. His great French contemporary, 
Corneille, made Castro's work the basis of his own brilliant 
tragedy of The Cid, a drama which for two hundred years 
fixed the character of the stage throughout Europe. Thus 
the father of French tragedy owes much to the genius of his 
Spanish predecessor. 

The following passage from Castro's work, depicting the 
anxiety of the Cid's father who is waiting in the twilight for 
his heroic son, after the duel, is regarded as superior to Cor- 
neille's presentation of the same scene: 

"The timid ewe bleats not so mournfully, 

Its shepherd lost, nor cries the angry lion 

With such a fierceness for its stolen young, 

As I for Roderic. — My son! my son! 

Each shade I pass, amid the closing night, 

Seems still to wear thy form and mock my arms! 

O, why, why comes he not? I gave the sign, — 

I marked the spot, — and yet he is not here! 

Has he neglected? Can he disobey? 

It may not be! A thousand terrors seize me. 

Perhaps some injury or accident 

Has made him turn aside his hastening step; — 

Perhaps he may be slain, or hurt or seized. 

The very thought freezes my breaking heart. 

O holy Heaven, how many ways for fear 



142 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Can grief find out! — But Hark! What do I hear? 

Is it his footstep? Can it be? O, no! 

Tis but the echo of my grief I hear. 

But hark again! Methinks there comes a gallop 

On the flinty stones. He springs from off his steed!" 

'The Poem of the Cid," covering nearly four thousand 
lines, upon which Castro bases his famous drama, is one of 
the classics of the mediaeval ages, as well as among the earliest 
and most characteristic specimens of Spanish poetry. The 
Cid was the great Spanish hero of the age of Chivalry, and 
was born in northwestern Spain, about the year 1040 — a 
quarter of a century before the Battle of Hastings, — and he 
died at Valencia in 1099, while the knights of Christendom 
who followed Godfry of Bouillon on the First Crusade were 
planting the Christian standards upon the walls of Jerusalem. 
The Cid himself had devoted the greater part of his life to 
battling with the Saracens on the Moorish frontiers of Spain 
where for centuries Spanish bravery held back the Moham- 
medan advance. His name was originally Rodrigo Diaz, 
and the title of Cid came to him in the field, from the fact 
that five Moorish chieftains, vanquished by him in a single 
battle, acknowledged him as their Seid, or conqueror. 

"The Poem of the Cid" is a spirited portrayal of Spanish 
Chivalry, and a living picture of the stirring times described. 
It breathes the spirit of battle, and rings throughout with the 
clang of lance and shield. The reader may gain an idea of its 
chivalric dash and spirit from these lines, translated by J. 
Hookman Frere, describing the scene at Alcocer, where, 
besieged by the Moors, the Cid saved himself by a bold sally, 
in which he overwhelmed the Moorish line: 

'Their shields before their breasts, forth at once they go, 
Their lances in the rest, leveled fair and low, 
Their banners and their crests, waving in a row, 
Their heads all stooping down toward the saddle-bow; 



VICENTE 143 

The Cid was in the midst, his shout was heard afar, 

'I am Ruy Diaz, the champion of Bivar; 

Strike amongst them, gentlemen, for sweet mercy's sake!' 

There where Bermuez fought amidst the foe they brake, 

Three hundred bannered knights, it was a gallant show. 

Three hundred Moors they killed, a man with every blow; 

When they wheeled and turned, as many more were slain; 

You might see them raise their lances, and level them 
again." 

The reader will agree with Ticknor, in his History of 
Spanish Literature, when he says concerning this poem: "It 
is, indeed, a work which, as we read it, stirs us with the spirit 
of the times it describes; and as we lay it down and recollect 
the intellectual condition of Europe when it was written, and 
for a long time before, it seems certain that, during the 
thousand years which elapsed from the time of the decay of 
Greek and Roman culture, down to the appearance of the 
'Divinia Commedia,' no poetry was produced so original in 
its tone or so full of natural feeling, picturesqueness and 
energy." 

Castro was more faithful to the incidents of the poem than 
was Corneille, and the great Frenchman would have been less 
deserving of the censure of Richelieu and the French Academy 
had he adhered more closely to his Spanish original; although, 
it must be confessed, that in some respects he has improved 
upon the Spanish work. 



IX. 
VICENTE. 



In his "Literature of Europe" Mr. Hallam cites an article 
from the Biographie Universelle in proof of the statement that 
the first drama produced in modern Europe was by Gil Vicente, 
a Portuguese. It was a spiritual drama, and was performed at 



144 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Lisbon on the festival of Corpus Christi, in 1504. But Ticknor 
declares that Vicente's first drama was presented in 1502. 

The date of Vicente's birth is not known, but he died in 
1557. He produced tragedies, comedies and farces, besides 
works of religious devotion. Ticknor thinks that, taken 
together, they are better than anything else in Portuguese 
literature. Many of his plays, however, are written in 
Spanish, a language which he handled with equal facility. 
Ten of his plays are in Castilian, fifteen partly so, and seven- 
teen in Portuguese. Vicente, therefore, must be classed among 
the great authors of both Spain and Portugal. 

Joan de Barros, the Portuguese historian, writing in 1785, 
praises Vicente for the purity of his thought and style. The 
real power of Vicente lies in his poetry, or in the poetic parts 
of his dramas. The following verse, illustrating his lyrical 
style, is from Bowring's translation: 

The rose looks out in the valley, 
And thither will I go, 

To the rosy gale, where the nightingale 
Sings his song of woe. 

It is worthy of note that in Gil Vicente's poetry it is the male 
nightingale which sings, and not the female. Many of the 
poets (Petrarch, Milton and Shakespeare among them) have 
fallen into the rather curious error of causing the female 
nightingale to sing. Vicente appears to have observed 
nature more closely than some other singers of first-rate powers. 
Through his lyrical talents some of Vicente's dramas are 
made to serve a political purpose. Thus, when recruits are 
wanted for an expedition against the Moors of Africa, he 
closes one of his pieces with this poetical exhortation by way 
of envoi: 

To the field! To the field! 
Cavaliers of emprise! 
Angels pure from the skies 

Come to help us and shield. 



VICENTE 145 

To the field! To the field! 
With armor all bright, 

They speed down the road, 

On man call, on God 
To succor the right. 

Gil Vicente wrote many pastoral dramas and autos. One 
of these, written about 1503, was first presented in the monast- 
ery of Enxobregas, one Christmas morning, before the royal 
family. It is entitled "The Auto of the Sibyl Cassandra," 
and is of interest, not only as one of the very earliest dramatic 
pieces of modern times, but because of the pastoral elegance 
of some of the lyrics. Cassandra, the shepherd-maid, declines 
to marry. In the course of the play she sings this song: 

They say " 'Tis time, go marry! go!" 
But I'll no husband! not I! no! 
For I would live all carelessly, 
Amidst these hills, a maiden free, 
And never ask, nor anxious be, 

Of wedded weal or woe. 
Yet still they say, "Go marry! go!" 
But I'll no husband! not I! no! 

So, mother, think not I shall wed, 
And through a tiresome life be led, 
Or use, in folly's ways instead, 

What grace the heavens bestow. 
Yet still they say, "Go marry! go!" 
But I'll no husband! not I! no! 

The man has not been born, I ween, 
Who as my husband shall be seen; 
And since what frequent tricks have been 

Undoubtedly I know, 
In vain they say, "Go marry! go!" 
For I'll no husband! not I! no! 



146 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Gil Vicente was the father of the Portuguese drama, if not 
of the drama of modern Europe. He was an actor as well 
as a playright, and his children often acted with him. His 
works were first collected and published by his son, four years 
after the death of Vicente. A monumental edition was 
brought out at Hamburg, in 1832. 



X. 

CALDERON. 



The latest luminary of the golden age of Spanish literature 
was Pedro Calderon de la Barca, the great rival and successor 
of Lope de Vega. He was born January 17, 1600, and died 
on the Feast of Pentecost, 1681, while all Spain was ringing 
with his religious plays, and while engaged in literary work; 
"dying," according to his friend De Solis, "as they say the 
swan dies, singing." So great was his fame that at Naples, 
Lisbon and Rome his death was publicly noted as a national 
calamity. 

Like Corneille, his French contemporary, Calderon was 
educated by the Jesuits. He served in the Spanish wars of 
the period and was a favorite at the court of Madrid. He 
composed his first literary work when barely fourteen years 
of age, and was still writing when death called him, at the 
age of eighty-one. He was thirty-five years old when Lope 
de Vega died, and from that time forth he was undisputed 
master of the Spanish stage. 

Calderon is said to have been a man of singularly hand- 
some countenance, courtly manners, of dignified and chaste 
deportment, and possessed of a voice of rare sweetness, 
gentleness and beauty. No man was more deeply or more 
deservedly beloved by his contemporaries. He was of a 
most considerate and benevolent nature, and his brilliant 
successes did not mar his meek, modest, pious and sunny 



CALDERON 147 

spirit. He was firmly opposed to publishing his works, and 
thus the task of collecting them has been rendered very 
difficult. But he wrote not less than 127 plays and 97 autos. 
No man ever equalled him in the auto, or religious drama, and 
from this source alone he amassed a fortune, the whole of 
which was devoted to charitable works. 

The plots of Calderon, like those of Lope de Vega, are 
characterized by great ingenuity. He has been a fertile field 
for the dramatists of other countries, notably Corneille in 
France, and Gozzi in Italy. Two of his comedies were trans- 
lated by the Earl of Bristol. Dryden took his "Mock Astrol- 
oger" from Corneille, who, in turn, borrowed it from Calderon. 
His "El Principe Constante," translated by A. W. Schlegel, 
was brought out in Germany under the auspices of Goethe, 
and was acted with great success at Weimar, Berlin and Vienna. 
J. Schultze ranks it with the "Divinia Commedia," 

A. W. Schlegel, the man who gave Shakespeare to Ger- 
many, performed a similar service for Calderon, whose work, 
in some respects, he regarded as superior to that of Shake- 
speare. It is admitted that Schlegel 's German translation of 
Shakespeare is the best in any foreign language, and the same 
is doubtless true of his translation of Calderon. 

When Calderon reached middle life he joined a religious 
order, and became a priest of the Congregation of St. Peter, of 
which he rose to be the superior, and held that sacred office 
during the last fifteen years of his life. "He knew how," as 
Augustin de Lara said of him, "to unite by humility and pru- 
dence the duties of an obedient child and a loving father." 

In both his lyrics and his dramatic works Calderon is 
noted for his moving tenderness, the glowing enchantment and 
dazzling brilliance of his imagery, the preternatural splendor 
of his scenic effects, the superabundance of his vocabulary, 
the rich variety of his measures, the charming and delicious 
melody of his rhyme, his marvelous fluency of versification, 
and the serene Castilian majesty of his style. But few of his 



148 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

lyrical works have survived. A specimen of his simple and 
tender lyrical style is the poem, in ballad measure, of which 
the burden is "O dulce Jesus mio, no entres, Senor, con vuestro 
siervo en juicio!" Two stanzas follow: 

How much resembles here our birth 

The final hour of all! 
Weeping at first we see the earth, 
And weeping hear death's call. 
O, spare me, Jesus, spare me, Savior dear, 
Nor meet thy servant as a judge severe! 

When first we entered this dark world, 

We hailed it with a moan; 
And when we leave its confines dark, 
Our farewell is a groan. 
O, spare me, Jesus, spare me, Savior dear, 
Nor meet thy servant as a judge severe! 



PART FIVE 

GREAT FRENCH AUTHORS 



I. Montaigne. 

II. Rabelais. 

III. Fenelon. 

IV. Montesquieu. 
V. Corneille. 

VI. Racine. 

VII. Moliere. 

VIII. La Fontaine. 

IX. Voltaire. 

X. Hugo. 



(149) 



Of all European literature the French is by general consent 
that which possesses the most uniformly fertile, brilliant and 
unbroken history. 

— Saintsbury. 



(150) 



MONTAIGNE 151 

I. 

MONTAIGNE. 

The father of the modern essay was Michel Eyquem de 
Montaigne, whose volume is the earliest of the French 
classics, and the publication of whose essays marked an 
epoch in the literature of the world. 

Montaigne was born on the last day of February, 1533. 
He learned Latin before he learned French, his father having 
placed him in infancy under a German tutor who addressed 
him only in Latin. He was educated in the law, but soon 
abandoned that profession. He was a "councilor" in the 
Parliament of Bordeaux, and was twice chosen mayor of 
that city. He conducted negotiations between King Henry 
IV. of Navarre and the Duke of Guise, with both of whom 
he was upon friendliest terms. He was highly esteemed by 
Catherine de Medicis, by the Kings of France who reigned 
in his lifetime, and generally by the public men of his day, 
regardless of faction, politics or religion — a statement which 
probably cannot be made of any other equally prominent 
person of that unsettled and bloody era. In this respect 
his career reminds us of that of Petrarch, the great Italian. 
His fairness, his patience and his equanimity won the hearts 
of all, and his character was a better defense for him than an 
army of soldiers. During all the civil wars of that stormy 
period the chateau of Montaigne was left unguarded and 
unbarred. He had, as he said, "no other guard or sentinel 
than the stars." 

At the age of thirty-eight he decided to eschew public 
life altogether and give his time wholly to literature; a reso- 
lution which he was not able to carry out in its entirety, 
but in which he at least approximately succeeded. Whether 
in his library with his Plutarch and Seneca, or patching up 
truces for the Duke of Guise and King Henry IV., or serving 
the court of France, or arbitrating, in the mayoralty of 



152 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Bordeaux, the differences of his neighbors, he led a life of 
serene and tranquil contemplation, displaying at all times 
his candid and sincere temper, and mingling a sort of amiable 
skepticism with an honest faith in God and a genuine love 
of man. 

Montaigne has been more generally read than any other 
prose-writer of the sixteenth century, and is still one of the 
favorite authors of mankind. It is very doubtful if there is a 
single person of broad and liberal culture in all the world 
today who has not at some period of his life fallen under the 
sorcer's spell of old Montaigne. He and Machiavelli were 
the writers who most profoundly influenced the thought 
of the sixteenth century; and, as Hallam observes, these 
two, and Rabelais, are the only writers of that age, aside 
from poets and historians, who are much read at the present 
time. 

The perennial charm of Montaigne is as hard to define 
as it is difficult to resist. Whether the appeal may be thought 
to lie in his sprightly humor, in his rambling and discursive 
manner, in his desultory, cheerful, conversational style, his 
bewitching affluence of speech, his fascinating simplicity, his 
placid equability, or in the opalescent brightness of those 
pages which he has graced with such an aerial delicacy and 
lightness of touch, he entertains, he soothes and satisfies the 
leisure hour. When the King of France told Montaigne 
that he liked his essays, the latter replied: "Then, sire, 
you will like me; I am my essays." And he tells us the same 
thing in his preface: "Thus, reader, myself am the matter 
of my book; there's no reason thou shouldst employ thy 
leisure about so frivolous and vain a subject." But, for all 
that, as Emerson has said: "This book of Montaigne the 
world has endorsed by translating it into all tongues and 
printing seventy-five editions of it in Europe; and that, too, 
a circulation somewhat chosen, namely, among courtiers, 
soldiers, princes, men of the world, and men of wit and 



MONTAIGNE 153 

generosity." Sainte-Beuve calls him "the French Horace" — 
an eminently apt characterization, too; for the reader of 
Montaigne cannot have escaped his Horation attitude 
throughout. He is, indeed, a true and living exemplification 
of Horace's "golden mean." Balzac said of him that he 
carried human reason as far and as high as it could go, both 
in politics and in morals. But that, we should say, is taking 
the French essayist rather too seriously. It reminds one of 
the statement of Charles Francis Adams in his Phi Beta 
Kappa address at Cambridge, in 1883, wherein he said that 
he preferred the "philosophy" of Montaigne to the "plati- 
tudes" of Cicero. However, it is hardly to be supposed that 
Cicero will suffer in any comparison with Montaigne, not- 
withstanding the opinion of the American scholar just quoted. 
When we have said of Montaigne that he possessed tact, 
good sense, a kindly spirit, the saving grace of humor, and 
an unfailing literary charm, we have said as much as can be 
said for most great prose writers of the sixteenth century. 

Montaigne, like Horace, has been peculiarly the com- 
panion of the literati of the generations that have succeeded 
him. Epicurean in his tendencies he undoubtedly was; but 
he was not the proponent of any particular sect or school of 
thought. To say that he argued for any specific set or system 
of ideas in politics, religion or philosophy is to misapprehend 
his meaning. But he speaks truth; whether by accident or 
design, directly or by innuendo, apparently does not concern 
him. His air is that of one who speaks for entertainment — 
and primarily for his own divertisement. He has no cause 
to argue, no point to prove. He is not seeking proselytes 
or making followers. What does it matter? And this be- 
guiling attitude of nonchalance, this sweet insouciance, is 
one secret of his charm. He talks and clatters along at an 
amazing rate, but the spirit of controversy is not in him. 
He is not polemical, nor emotional. He does not care to 
convince, seek to persuade, nor mean to offend. If he has 



154 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

jarred the nerves of Pascal and Malebranche, it was, we are 
persuaded, wholly unintentional — and he would say so now, 
if he could; but he might add, as he does in his essay "Of 
Repentance:" "I speak truth, not so much as I would, but 
as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more as I grow older." 

Hallam has observed that Montaigne's great influence 
has been felt not directly upon the multitude so much as 
through the great minds he has reached and helped to mould. 
We know that his influence upon Shakespeare was very great. 
Victor Hugo thinks that he saved the English bard from the 
concetti of the Italian school, and thus made Hamlet possible. 
However that may be, we are at liberty to surmise that Mon- 
taigne was in Shakespeare's library, and we know that in 
"The Tempest," in the speech of Gonzalo, wherein the ideal 
commonwealth is described, the words are taken almost 
verbatim from Montaigne's Essays, Bk. I., Chap. 30. 

"His book," says Sainte-Beuve, "is a treasure-house of 
moral observations and of experience; at whatever page it is 
opened, and in whatever condition of mind, some wise thought 
expressed in a striking and enduring fashion is certain to be 
found. It will at once detach itself and engrave itself on 
the mind, a beautiful meaning in full and forcible words, in 
one vigorous line, familiar or great. The whole of his book, 
said Etienne Pasquier, is a real seminary of beautiful and 
remarkable sentences, and they come in so much the better 
that they run and hasten on without thrusting themselves 
into notice. There is something for every age, for every 
hour of life." 

English writers have often compared Montaigne with 
Addison. It has been observed that Addison was more 
Christian in spirit, with a faith serene and steadfast; while 
Montaigne was more worldly, with something of the skeptical 
indifference and levity of the worldly spirit. If Montaigne's 
influence has been wider, Addison's has perhaps been more 
elevating. In Besant's French Humorists (chapter 6) it is 



RABELAIS 155 

said: "Montaigne's Essays owe their greatest charm to the 
fact that they reveal not only the secrets of a soul, but of a 
soul not much raised above the commonplace, and like our 
own. Like ours, and yet superior. His mind differed in 
degree from ours, not in kind; larger, broader, keener." 
Saintsbury remarks that Montaigne is one of the few great 
writers who have not only perfected but have also invented 
a literary form. 



II. 

RABELAIS. 

Francois Rabelais was born about 1490 and died about 
1553. The exact dates are unknown. He was the son of a 
tavern keeper and apothecary of Chinon, in Touraine. He was 
first a Franciscan Monk, then a Benedictine, then a secular 
priest, and then a physician, by virtue of various permits 
from the Vatican. On January 18, 1536, Pope Paul III 
issued a bull granting him authority to gratuitously practice 
medicine, excluding surgery, because of his "zeal for religion, 
knowledge of literature, and probity of life and morals." 
The Holy Father must have strained a point when he signed 
that statement, or else — he did not know Rabelais. The 
reference to his literary knowledge, however, is amply justi- 
fied, for Rabelais was one of the most learned men of his 
century. His was perhaps the keenest intelligence of that 
generation of men. But as to his zeal for religion, and his 
probity of life and morals — well, perhaps the Vatican may 
not have enjoyed special sources of information which have 
been disclosed by the vigilance of modern scholarship. To 
the best of our knowledge, we are inclined to apply to him 
the observation which Lady Wortley Montague applied to 
Henry Fielding: "His happy constitution made him forget 
everything when he was before a venison pasty, or over 
a flask of champagne." 



156 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

In Pantagruel's history, Rabelais, with his rollicking 
humor and redundant fertility of language, has given us the 
most brilliant piece of fiction which French literature of that 
age affords, and, with all its moral coarseness, one of the 
greatest in the classics of all time. That such pungent wit 
and exuberant jollity, such joyous jest, such amiable raillery 
and exquisite humor, should be encompassed with such a 
nauseating mass of conglomerate verbal filth, is matter of 
most poignant regret. 

"In Gargantua and Pantagruel," says Dr. Benjamin 
Willis Wells, "frank fooling is mingled with keen social satire, 

political insight, and pedagogic wisdom In the first 

book, Gargantua, will be found, together with the farcical 
adventure of that giant, the notable deeds of Friar John, the 
founding of the Abbey of Thelema, and the quintessence of 
Rabelaisian social and pedagogical philosophy. The second 
had for its original descriptive title Pantagruel, King of the 
Drunkards, Portrayed According to Life, with His Amazing 
Deeds and Feats of Prowess. . . . Rabelais's influence on 
the development of fiction was small, but Pantagruel, Panurge 
and Friar John are imperishable creations." We learn from 
one of Rabelais's biographies that in France the time of 
paying a reckoning in a drink-shop is still called, among the 
Pantagruellists, or good fellows, a "quart d'heure de Rabe- 
lais" — or Rabelais's quarter of an hour. 

Rabelais is the French Aristophanes; but he also re- 
sembles Lucian. In his satire he has been likened to both 
Swift and Cervantes; but he is a greater scholar than either, 
although lacking the terrible vehemence of Swift and the 
majestic equability of Cervantes. It may interest some 
of our money-mad financiers to know that Panurge had 
sixty- three ways of making money, "of which the honestest 
was by sly theft." 

"Panurge is so admirably conceived," says Hallam, 
"that we may fairly reckon him original; but the germ of 



RABELAIS 157 

the character is in the gracioso, or clown, of the extempora- 
neous stage; the roguish, selfish, cowardly, cunning attendant, 
who became Panurge in the plastic hands of Rabelais, and 
Sancho in those of Cervantes. The French critics have not, 
in general, done justice to Rabelais, whose manner was not 
that of the age of Louis XIV. The 'Tale of a Tub' appears to 
me by far the closest imitation of it, and to be conceived alto- 
gether in a kindred spirit; but, in general, those who have had 
reading enough to rival the copiousness of Rabelais have wanted 
his invention and humor, or the riotousness of his animal 
spirits." 

Pope in his "Dunciad" (Book I.) also notes the Rabe- 
laisian similarity of Swift in the following lines: 

"O thou! whatever title please thine ear, 
Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff or Gulliver! 
Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air, 
Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair." 

However, a distinguished French author, M. Taine, in his 
History of English Literature, says that Swift "must not be 
compared with Rabelais; that good giant, that drunken 
doctor, rolls himself joyously about on his dunghill, thinking 
no evil; the dunghill is warm, convenient, a fine place to 
philosophize and sleep off one's wine. When the casks are 
emptied down his throat, and the viands are gorged, we 
sympathize with so much bodily comfort ; * * * in the laughter 
of this Homeric mouth we see, as through a mist, the relics 
of bacchanal religions, the fecundity, the monstrous joy of 
nature; these are the splendors of its first births." 

But Rabelais was something more than a humorist, 
gourmand and scorner of conventionalities. "In the young 
Gargantua's course of education," writes the French master- 
critic, Sainte-Beuve, "we have the first plan of what Mon- 
taigne, Charron, in places and parts the Port Royal school, 
the Christian school * * * set forth with greater seriousness 



158 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

but not with more good sense. We have in advance at one 
glance, and with brilliant genius, what Rousseau will expound 
later in 'Emile'." 

In early life Voltaire put Rabelais down as merely "a 
drunken philosopher, who only wrote when he was drunk." 
But twenty-five years later he wrote to Madame du Deffand : 
"After Clarissa Harlowe, I read over again some chapters 
of Rabelais. * * * I know them, indeed, almost by heart, but 
I read them with the greatest pleasure, because they are the 
most vivid descriptions in the world. It is not that I regard 
Rabelais as equal to Horace. Rabelais, when he is in good 
humor, is the best of good buffoons; two of the craft are not 
wanted in a nation, but there must be one. I repent that I 
formerly spoke ill of him." 

"Yes," as Sainte-Beuve adds, "Rabelais is a buffoon, 
but a unique buffoon, a Homeric buffoon! Voltaire's latest 
opinion will remain that of all men of sense and taste, of 
those who do not possess a decided inclination and predilec- 
tion for Rabelais. But for the rest, for the true amateur, 
for the real pantagruelist devotees, Rabelais is something 
very different. At the bottom of Master Francois's cask, 
even in the dregs, there is a flavor not to be explained." 

Like Cervantes, Rabelais teems with homely, common- 
sense aphorisms which have become household words through- 
out the world, such as, for example, his well-known couplet: 

"The Devil was sick, — the Devil a monk would be; 
The Devil got well, — the Devil a monk was he." 
According to Motteux, the last words of Rabelais were 
these: "I am going to seek a great perhaps." 



FENELON 159 

III. 

FENELON. 

Of that mighty quintette of brilliant ecclesiastics sur- 
rounding the throne of Louis XIV. — Bossuet, Bourdaloue, 
Flechier, Massillon and Fenelon — the first named is still 
the most eloquent pulpit orator the world has ever known; 
but the name of Fenelon shines in French literature with a 
luster all its own, and rays forth upon the Age of the Grand 
Monarch its most splendid beams. 

Fenelon was born in 1651, and died in 1715 after a life 
of active scholarship, pious humility and good works. His 
life was one of gentleness and moderation. In 1688 Louis 
XIV. appointed him tutor to his grandson, the Duke of 
Burgundy. He had been teaching at Paris while following 
the vocation of the priesthood, had written a book on educa- 
tion, and the new post was admirably adapted to his talents 
and suited to his inclinations. Bossuet said that the bestowal 
of this position upon Fenelon was "a proper reward for merit 
that took pains to conceal itself." Many of Fenelon's 
literary works — perhaps the majority of them — were com- 
posed as text-books for the young prince. At any rate, he 
discharged his duties with such fidelity and zeal that in 1694 
he was made Abbot of Saint Valery, and the next year he 
was made Archbishop of Cambray. So wide was the fame 
of the charity and piety of the great Archbishop that when 
the country was ravaged by the English under Marlborough, 
the English general gave orders that none of the estates of 
the Archbishop were to be invaded, and a guard was given 
him for his protection. Nevertheless, his residence was 
burned — by accident or mistake, it is supposed — and many 
of Fenelon's unpublished manuscripts were destroyed, to- 
gether with his priceless library. His only comment upon 
his calamity was: "I would much rather that this were 
destroyed than the cottage of some poor peasant!" But we 



160 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

know how great the loss to him when we recall his words, 
written on another occasion: "If the crowns of all the king- 
doms of Europe were laid at my feet in exchange for my 
books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all." 

Further light is thrown upon the character of the saintly 
bishop by his part in the famous controversy over "Quietism" 
— a controversy which would now be forgotten by the literary 
world but for the fact that the two old friends, then the 
greatest luminaries of the Gallican Church — Bossuet and 
Fenelon — found themselves on opposite sides. In his "Max- 
ims of the Saints," Fenelon appears to have fallen into some 
of the heresies of Madame Guyon, a religious woman of whose 
piety and good faith Fenelon had no doubt, although her 
"Quietism" smacks somewhat of the Hindu doctrine of 
"Nirfana." Bossuet, it appears, prosecuted the gentle 
Fenelon with great bitterness. Finally twenty-three propo- 
sitions from the "Maxims" were condemned by the Pope, 
who said, however, that Fenelon had "erred through excess 
of Divine love, but you have erred through lack of love for 
your neighbor." 

Fenelon appears to have been the first to write a treatise 
on female education, which he did, in 1681, at the request 
of the Duchess of Beauvilliers — "De 1' education des filles" — 
of which there are a number of good English translations. 
In this book, which displays most characteristically the natural 
sweetness and charm of his humane disposition, Fenelon 
anticipates by a hundred years the foundations of modern 
pedagogy which are laid in Rousseau's "Emile," and is 
wholly free from any of the objectionable features of Rous- 
seau. Fenelon's theory of education is indulgent, and his 
method a labor of love. As Hallam observes, "a desire to 
render children happy for the time, as well as afterward, 
runs through his book, and he may, perhaps, be considered 
the founder of that school which has endeavored to dissipate 
the terrors and dry the tears of childhood." Let us quote 



FENELON 161 

but a sentence: "I have seen," he says "many children 
who have learned to read in play ; we have only to read enter- 
taining stories to them out of a book, and insensibly teach 
them the letters; they will soon desire to go for themselves 
to the source of their amusement." Frobel and Pestalozzi 
have added very little to the comprehensive view of child-life 
and growth expressed in this little treatise; while Locke's 
treatise, published at about the same time, is hardly to be 
compared with it. 

One of the books written by Fenelon for his noble pupil 
was his "Dialogues of the Dead," patterned after Fontenelle, 
who, of course, took the idea from Lucian, the source whence 
the Spaniard, Quevedo, obtained the idea of his "Visions." 
But LaHarpe very much prefers the work of Fenelon to that 
of Fontenelle. "The noble zeal of Fenelon not to spare the 
vices of kings, in writing for the heir of one so imperious and 
so open to the censure of reflecting minds, shines throughout 
these dialogues." 

It was the same "noble zeal" displayed in the "Tele- 
machus" that caused Fenelon's permanent banishment from 
the court of Louis XIV. This work, stolen by a servant and 
published without the author's consent, was declared to 
contain very plain references to the vices of the court of the 
Grand Monarch. But, nevertheless, it is Fenelon's greatest 
creation. Critics are not agreed as to whether the "Tele- 
machus" is an epic or a romance. Blair declares it to be 
an epic. Hallam calls it a romance. But the reader will 
bear in mind, with Lord Karnes, in his "Elements of Criti- 
cism," that the distinction is often shadowy indeed. Vol- 
taire in his essay on "Epic Poetry" excludes the "Telemachus" 
from that class. It is a work of great moral and esthetic 
excellence, breathing the genuine classical spirit, noble in 
diction, rich in poetic imagery, charming in its grace and 
dignity, written in a remarkably harmonious and poetical 
prose, permeated by a beautiful enthusiasm, and covered as 



162 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

with a mantle of divine grace by the author's inimitable 
sweetness of style and spirit. No book in the French lan- 
guage has been more widely read, and none more fully de- 
serves the popularity it still maintains. For, truly may it 
be said of Fenelon, as he said of another: "II embellit tout 
ce qu'il touche" — He adorns all that he touches. 



IV. 
MONTESQUIEU. 

Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, President 
of the Parliament of Bordeaux, was born in 1689, and died 
in 1755. He was one of the most accomplished scholars of 
his day, and ranks among the greatest of political philosophers. 

In 1721 he published his Persian Letters, in which, 
affecting the guise of a Persian, he ridiculed the civilization 
of his times. In 1734, after making a tour of Europe, he 
published his Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur 
and Decadence of the Romans. Fourteen years later ap- 
peared his master work, the Spirit of Laws, upon which he 
had been engaged for twenty years, and which will be forever 
numbered among the classics. 

His favorite authors were Tacitus and Plutarch, and 
Tacitus is perhaps the only great writer who has equalled 
him in the conciseness of his style. Voltaire said of him 
that "when the human race had lost their charters, Mon- 
tesquieu rediscovered and restored them." The King of 
Sardinia declared that Montesquieu had taught him the 
art of government. But it was in America that the brilliant 
French publicist was to score his most splendid triumph. 
American liberty owes more to the mind of Montesquieu 
than it does to the arm of Lafayette. 

It is said that Washington, as soon as he determined to 
attend the federal congress at Philadelphia, "made himself 



MONTESQUIEU 163 

familiar with the writings of Montesquieu." The address 
penned by John Dickinson and issued by authority of congress 
to the people of Quebec, in the hope of gaining their aid in 
the projected revolution, was made up principally of apt 
quotations from the "Spirit of Laws." A well-known writer 
has declared that the American colonial leaders "knew 
Montesquieu as familiarly as they knew the traditions of 
Englishmen." Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington 
and Gouverneur Morris were among those who knew Mon- 
tesquieu better than they knew Blackstone. 

When the adoption of the Federal Constitution was under 
consideration, the author most cited and quoted in those 
discussions was Montesquieu. Singularly enough he was, 
like the Bible, sometimes cited as authority by both sides, 
and the discussion was in some instances narrowed simply 
to a correct interpretation of the French author. When his 
real opinions were determined, the matter was beyond con- 
troversy. His recommendations were accepted with implicit 
faith. No one had the temerity to doubt his wisdom. None 
questioned the truth of his conclusions or the justice of his 
observations. To these giant statesmen his voice was 
oracular and his word was law. 

The longest quotation in the Federalist is in one of 
Hamilton's papers, and it is from Montesquieu. When 
Madison was seeking to demonstrate the wisdom of separating 
the executive, legislative and judicial powers, he said ("The 
Federalist," No. xlvi*^ : "The oracle who is always consulted 
and cited or j1 ' tbjeet is the celebrated Montesquieu. 
If he be not the autho*- of this invaluable precept in the science 
of politics, he has the merit at least of displaying and recom- 
mending it most effet tually to the attention of mankind." 
In this view Madison is supported by Dr. Francis Lieber, 
the political guide of Justice Story and Chancellor Kent, 
and the personal friend and adviser of Lincoln. Lieber 
declared, in a note to page 150 of his "Civil Liberty and Self- 



164 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Government," that "Montesquieu is the first political phil- 
osopher who distinctly conceived the necessity of a division 
of power." Montesquieu was likewise one of the chief 
authorities, if not the principal one, cited in support of the 
idea of a federal union. Jeremy Bentham notes also that 
he was one of the first to see the harmfulness of too many 
laws and an intricate code; a lesson which Montesquieu first 
learned, no doubt, from his Tacitus (Annals, Bk. Ill, p. 160): 
"Corruption abounding in the commonwealth, the common- 
wealth abounded in laws." 

Montesquieu fully merited the tribute of Lord Chester- 
field, who said of him: "His virtues did honor to human 
nature; his writings, justice. A friend to mankind, he as- 
serted their undoubted and unalienable rights and liberties. 
His works will illustrate his name, and survive him as long 
as right reason, moral obligation and the true spirit of laws 
shall be understood, respected and maintained." Indeed, 
for any lover of liberty today, no book will better repay a 
reading than Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws. His philosophy 
is a perpetual fountain of freedom, while his epigrammatic 
style, coruscating and luminous, v II forever interest, instruct 
and delight the cultured mind. Mc * T are the ills we might 
be spared if modern statesmen would but turn again to him! 
Thus, he warns: "The deterioration ot a government begins 
almost always by the decay of its principles." And again: 
"Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty." 
Volumes could tell us no more of human history than he has 
here said in a single line. 

Montesquieu has grasped, as few others have done, the 
true purpose of all mental culture, i <id he expresses it in 
these words: "The first motive wh'ch. ought to impel us 
to study is the desire to augment the e excellence of our nature, 
and to render an intelligent being yet more intelligent." 
This, as Matthew Arnold said, in 1 is essay on "Sweetness 



CORNEILLE 165 

and Light," is the true ground to assign for the genuine 

scientific passion, however manifested, and for culture, 
viewed simply as a fruit of this passion. 



v. 

CORNEILLE. 

Pierre Corneille was the son of a lawyer of Rouen. He 
was born June 6, 1606, was educated by the Jesuits, and was 
trained for the law. He practiced that profession for a few 
years, but soon abandoned it for the calling to which nature 
had apparently intended he should devote the best years of 
his life. 

To Corneille is accredited the happy discovery of the 
soubrette; and, as Edward Dowden observes, "It was some- 
thing to replace the old nurse of classic tragedy with the 
soubrette." The soubrette is therefore as distinctly French 
in its creation as the gracioso is purely Spanish. Corneille's 
first play, "Melite," appeared in 1629. His next was, 
"Clitandre," and was not so good as the first. "La Veuve" 
is better, and according to Fontenelle and La Harpe is the 
first model of the French higher comedy. "The Medea," 
his next piece, borrowed from Seneca, imparted a new tone 
of dign'ty to French tragedy. These works placed him in 
the front rank of French theatrical writers; but his greater 
triumphs were to follow. 

Seven years after his first production "The Cid" appeared, 
in 1636, and set all France ablaze. The plot was borrowed 
from Guillen de Castro It marked an epoch in French 
drama. The piece was denounced by Richelieu and the 
French Academy, it has been condemned by such critics as 
Scudery and Voltaire, a:id it was warmly defended by La 
Harpe and others. But it drew tremendously, and still 
pleases French audiences The next tragedy is "Les Horaces," 



166 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

which is open to the same objections as "The Cid," as lacking 
in the dramatic unities, but in literary style it is reckoned 
superior to "The Cid." He next produced the tragedy of 
"Cinna." In the opinion of many this is Corneille's greatest 
work. But it, too, is not without its dramatic defects. 
"Polyeucte," a story of Christian martyrdom, grips the 
heart, and its character of Pauline is one of the noblest of 
the French theatre. But Boileau and others objected to it 
because of its introduction of the mysteries of the Christian 
faith upon the stage. "Rodogune" was a favorite with 
Corneille himself, but does not hold the average reader. 
However, the first act of this play has been highly praised 
by La Harpe. "Pompey" was more defective than any of 
its predecessors. "Heraclius" is inferior to Corneille's best 
literary style, and "Nicomede" is below "Heraclius." No 
dramatist, indeed, is more uneven in his work than is Cor- 
neille. His "Pertharite" was such a failure that he retired 
from the drama for some years, during which period he ren- 
dered into verse the "Imitation of Christ" of Thomas a 
Kempis. Moliere, with whom he collaborated in the pro- 
duction of one play, drew him from his refrement, but the 
dramatic work of his later years was uniformly unsuccessful. 

The old age of Corneille was spent in poverty — to use 
his own words — "satiated with glory and hungry for money." 
Some grateful verses addressed to Louis XIV. were among 
his last efforts. The king had sent him a gift of money, at 
the request of Boileau. But two days later, on October 1, 
1684, the venerable father of French tragedy passed away. 
His great rival, Racine, delivered his euloery before the French 

Acadenx , and ivionere referred to 1 master. And 

so he died, poor in what the world calls wealth, but rich in 
the glory of an honored name merited so well by a pure and 
noble life. 

Such profound critics as For f melle and St. Evremont 
praise even his minor tragedies. Lucan was his favorite 



CORNEILLE 167 

author and his Roman prototype. He borrowed extensively 
from the Spanish dramatists, as well as from the Roman 
classics. But his unfailing and unfading beauty is in his 
elevated style. He is epic rather than tragic, and more 
splendid than touching. Corneille is distinguished for noble, 
masculine thought, for the warmth of his nervous eloquence, 
for his vivid narration, bold declamation, impressive energy, 
sonorous rhythm, for the peculiar richness of his genius, the 
fecundity of his imagination and the grandeur of his lofty 
sentiments. The French critic Faguet says that his language 
is "the most beautiful that ever fell from a French pen; the 
most masculine, energetic, at once sober and full, that was 
ever spoken in France." In the language of Professor Blair 
of Edinburgh, he "united the copiousness of Dryden with 
the fire of Lucan, and he resembles them also in their faults, 
in their extravagance and impetuosity." Yet his declama- 
tions, observes Dr. Benjamin Wells, "the tirades of Camilla, 
Augustus, Cornelia, and many another, are supreme in their 
kind, and will thrill audiences everywhere as long as the 
antinomies of love and patriotism, honor and duty, perplex 
men's souls." 

Corneille is one of the most quotable of the French 
authors, and the dignity of his sententious utterance is ap- 
parent from these excerpts: 

"We triumph without glory when we conquer without 
danger." — Le Cid. 

"He who allows himself to be insulted deserves to be so; 
and insolence, if unpunished, increases." — Heraclius. 

But the best known phrase of all, and one which has 
rolled like a thunderbolt around the world, is this, from his 
Heraclius: "Tyrant, step from thy throne, and give place 
to thy master" — Tyrans, descends du trone, et fais place a 
ton maitre! — a sentiment which one would think more 
likely to find expression in the Age of Revolutions than in 
the Age of Louis XIV. 



168 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

VI. 
RACINE. 

While lacking the copiousness and the heroic grandeur 
of Corneille's imagination, Jean Racine is undoubtedly the 
greatest of the French tragic poets, greatly excelling his 
gifted predecessor in tenderness, and in the uncommon 
beauty of his versification. Racine is noted for sympathetic 
power, for his delicate perception of ideal beauty, his ex- 
quisite Virgilian grace and majesty, his depth of thought, 
and his consummate beauty of diction. He is the French 
Euripides. 

Jean Racine was educated by the Port- Royalist teachers 
at l'Ecole des Granges, and at the College d'Harcourt, where 
he read and annotated all the Greek and Roman classics, 
and committed to memory the grand choruses of Sophocles 
and Euripides. At twenty-three he was a finished and an 
accomplished scholar. He was presented to the King, and 
soon formed close friendships with Boileau, Moliere and 
Furetiere. 

His first tragedy, Le Thebaide, was presented by Moliere's 
players in 1664, when the author was twenty-five years of 
age. He was then pensioned by the King. In the next 
year his Alexandre came out, and attracted wide attention. 
He showed this play to Corneille, who praised its versifica- 
tion, but advised him to avoid the drama as a field unsuited 
to his talents. 

But the glory of Racine dates from 1667, when he pre- 
sented his Andromaque, which he derived from Euripides. 
He was at once compared and contrasted with Corneille, 
and the discussion of their relative merits has continued 
ever since. It is said that the splendid acting of Mademoiselle 
de Champmele in the part of Hermione made the play a 
success. Racine prostrated himself at her feet, in a transport 
of gratitude; a feeling which, it is said, was soon turned to 



RACINE 169 

love, although they were never married. He afterwards 
wedded a woman whose material possessions exceeded her 
mental culture. 

In the year 1669 appeared his Britannicus. Of this 
play Hallam says: 'Tew tragedies on the French, or, indeed, 
on any stage, save those of Shakespeare, display so great a 
variety of contrasted character. * * * If he has not reached, 
as he never did, the peculiar impetuosity of Corneille, nor 
given to his Romans the grandeur of his predecessor's con- 
ception, he is full of lines wherein, as every word is effective, 
there can hardly be any deficiency of vigor. It is the vigor, 
indeed, of Virgil, not of Lucan." Berenice, his next tragedy, 
has been likened to Shakespeare's Timon of Athens. Corneille 
attempted, with less success, the same subject at about the 
same time. His next tragedy, Bajazet, falls below the others 
in beauty of style. Next came Mithridate, one of the 
strongest of his plays. This was followed, in 1674, by Iphi- 
genie, which, like the Andromaque, is derived from Euripides. 
In Phedre, produced in 1677, he again attempted to surpass 
Euripides. In this play he borrows more from the Greek 
than in any other. 

At this time, owing, perhaps, to his Puritanical relation- 
ships, and for other reasons, Racine appears to have abandoned 
the stage. He was recalled from his retirement by Madame 
de Maintenon, who induced him, in 1689, to write Esther, 
a Biblical drama, to be performed by the girl students of 
St. Cyr. Although possessing no superior dramatic excel- 
lence, the piece is touching and beautiful. Louis XIV. ap- 
plauded its performance, while the great Conde was affected 
to tears. 

Next, in 1691, came another sacred drama, the Athalie, 
far greater than Iphigenie or Britannicus, and unquestionably 
standing at the head of all his tragedies, although its author 
preferred the Phedre. Athalie was praised by Boileau, and 
by others among Racine's great contemporaries, but was not 



170 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

generally appreciated for some years. Voltaire has re- 
peatedly declared Athalie to be the "chef d'oeuvre" of the 
French stage. 

Rapine's tragedies are all written in Alexandrine verse. 
In literary style, Hallam places Racine next to Virgil among 
the poets. A great French critic, La Harpe, in his "Eloge 
de Racine," thus eloquently summarizes the merits of this 
mighty genius: "His expression is always so happy and so 
natural that it seems as if no other could be found; and 
every word is placed in such a manner that we cannot fancy 
any other place to have suited it as well. The structure of 
his style is such that nothing could be displaced, nothing 
added, nothing retrenched; it is one unalterable whole. 
Even his incorrectnesses are often but sacrifices required by 
good taste, nor would anything be more difficult than to 
write over again a line of Racine. No one has enriched the 
language with a greater number of turns of phrase; no one is 
bold with more felicity and discretion, or figurative with 
more grace and propriety; no one has handled with more 
command an idiom often rebellious, or with more skill an 
instrument always difficult; no one has better understood 
that delicacy of style which must not be mistaken for feeble- 
ness, and is, in fact, but that air of ease which conceals from 
the reader the labor of the work and the artifices of the 
composition; or better managed the variety of cadences, the 
resources of rhythm, the association and deduction of ideas. 
In short, if we consider that his perfection in these respects 
may be opposed to that of Virgil, and that he spoke a language 
less flexible, less poetical and less harmonious, we shall readily 
believe that Racine is, of all mankind, the one to whom 
nature has given the greatest talent for versification." 

In his old age, Racine lost the favor of the court, a fact 
attributed by some to his memoir on the miseries of the 
people. He died in 1699, at the age of sixty. 



MOLIERE 171 

VII. 
MOLIERE. 

Jean Baptiste Poquelin (who assumed the name of 
Moliere), ranked by Brander Matthews as ''the foremost 
figure in all French literature," was born in Paris, January 
15, 1622, the son of a tradesman, and died in the city of his 
birth at the age of fifty-one. He was educated by the Jesuits 
at the College de Clermont. In 1643 he abandoned the minor 
office which he then held, and chose the stage as a career. 
As a result of two unfortunate theatrical ventures, he was 
imprisoned for debt. 

In 1646 he organized a company of players, and for the 
next ten or twelve years he traveled over France as an actor 
and stage manager, learning to adapt and arrange plays, and, 
above all, learning human nature. Returning to Paris in 
1658, he played before the King, and gained a court popularity 
which he never lost. 

In 1659, at the age of thirty-seven, he presented his first 
satire on cultured society, and inaugurated a new era in 
French comedy. In L'Avare he depicted the vice of avarice, 
and created the character of Harpagon. His L'Ecole des 
Femmes is a most diverting comedy. He revenged himself 
upon the petty critics of this play by publishing that keen 
satire, La Critique d l'Ecole des Femmes, in which he pilloried 
the pedantic coterie of the Hotel Rambouillet. It has been 
called "the first great serious comedy of the French theatre." 

Moliere's Misanthrope is another famous comedy, in 
the opinion of the critics second only to his Tartuffe. Les 
Femmes Saventes is a highly amusing comedy, lambasting 
the poetasters and literary pretenders among the literary 
ladies and female fops of Paris — a numerous tribe, now 
widely dispersed, and by no means extinct. Les Precieuses 
Ridicules is another play of the same character. 



172 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

But Tartuffe is his masterpiece, and the greatest effort 
of his genius. It stands alone among the world's great 
comedies, with none worthy to be named beside it. Tartuffe 
is the comedy of religious hypocrisy, in which he unmasks 
and excoriates those whose love of God is manifested only 
in hatred for their fellowmen; whose hands are clasped in 
prayer only when they are not clasping a neighbor's purse; 
and who piously roll their jaundiced eyes to Heaven, while 
giving their festering hearts to Hell. "No one of Moliere's 
comedies," says Brander Matthews, "is more characteristic 
than Tartuffe, more liberal in its treatment of our common 
humanity, braver in its assault upon hypocrisy, or more 
masterly in technique.'' In this play, Moliere has ascended 
to the full height of his towering genius to crush with the 
pervasive power of his resistless humor and blighting irony 
that lowest type of social excrescence, the sour-faced, psalm- 
singing, whining, lying fraud who steals "the livery of the 
court of Heaven to serve the Devil in." He exposed its 
smug and smirking treachery. He smote its villainously 
dissembling sanctity. Moliere did not need to cry out with 
Byron : 

"Oh for a forty-parson power to chant 

Thy praise, Hypocrisy! Oh for a hymn 
Loud as the virtues thou dost loudly vaunt, 

Not practice!" 

Moliere had the power, and he wielded it, in his matchless 
serio-comic style, like a cat-o'-nine-tails in the hands of an 
offended deity. He dragged the slimy wretches from the 
sanctuaries they had polluted, from the temples they had 
disgraced, from the pews they had befouled, from the altars 
they had profaned, dishonored and betrayed, and he flayed 
them without mercy. He gave the rogues the bastinado, 
without sparing corn or bunion. He singed the wool from 
the sheep's clothing which they wore, and bared the ravening 
wolves. He lanced the most malignant ulcer on the face of 



MOLIERE 173 

human society, and he cauterized the wound. Naturally, 
the French Pecksniffs were offended. These whited sepul- 
chres belched forth their carrion criticisms in life, and pursued 
him vindictively in death. But Tartuffe yet points the 
detecting finger of scorn, while Moliere still lives, and mocks, 
and smiles! 

Another fraud laid bare by his unsparing pen was the 
medical quack. The quack doctor and the quack preacher 
usually go hand in hand. It is impossible to detect the one 
without perceiving the other. Moliere saw them both with 
an undimmed eye, and he lashed them with a fearless hand. 
His four medical comedies are masterpieces of their kind. 
He was acting a part in the last one, Le Malade imaginaire, 
when suddenly stricken on the stage. He was removed to 
his home, and a half hour later he was dead. His brave 
spirit had gone where the quack doctors have sent very many, 
but whither, there is reason to believe, no quack preacher 
has ever followed. 

Moliere will forever be read and enjoyed for his vivacious 
brilliancy, his humorous dialogue, his bright, scintillating 
and inimitable gayety, his elegant, polite and polished satire, 
his incisive ridicule, his wholesomeness, and his skillful 
delineation of character. His innocent mirth and pleasantry 
charm with a bewitching subtlety that dies not with the 
flight of time. Moliere would be known as the French 
Plautus, but for the fact that he surpasses by an immeasurable 
distance his Roman model. He hardly equals the gentlemanly 
elegance of Terence, but surpasses him in every other respect. 
He wrote better comedies than Shakespeare, and no English 
comic writer touches him in spirited and easy versification. 

In the words of the distinguished Dr. Blair, "The 
dramatic author in whom the French glory most, and whom 
they justly place at the head of all their comedians, is the 
famous Moliere. There is, indeed, no author in all the 
fruitful and distinguished age of Louis XIV. who has attained 



174 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

a higher reputation than Moliere, or who has more nearly 
reached the summit of perfection in his own art, according 
to the judgment of all the French critics. Voltaire boldly 
pronounces him to be the most eminent comic poet of any 
age or country; nor, perhaps, is this the decision of mere 
partiality; for, taking him upon the whole, I know none 
who deserves to be preferred to him." To which we may add 
the observation of Prof. Wells, that "no dramatist, save 
perhaps Shakespeare and Aristophanes, ever joined so much 
wit to so much seriousness as did Moliere." His name will 
forever stand enshrined with those of Goethe, Shakespeare, 
Lope de Vega and Sophocles, monarchs of the stage, and 
shining servitors of truth. 

The standard American authority on Moliere is Brander 
Matthews, who appraises the great French dramatist in the 
following language: "He had the humane sympathy of the 
true humorist, who hates shams of all kinds, but who is not 
savagely intolerant of those who believe in shams. He was 
devoid of acidity, and as healthy intellectually as Rabelais. 
His wit was never bitter or disintegrating, or aggressive. As 
the result of these varied qualities he was the most complete 
embodiment of the characteristics of his race. He is the 
true representative of the French, in his wit, in his skill, and 
in his urbanity. He is the master of modern comedy, greater 
than any of his successors in the past three centuries, and 
greater than any of his predecessors in Greek or Roman 
comedy twenty centuries ago — Menander, Plautus, and 
Terence." 

The three hundredth anniversary of his birth was cele- 
brated throughout the world in the year 1922. 



LA FONTAINE 175 

VIII. 
LA FONTAINE. . 

Jean de La Fontaine, "the French ^sop," was the greatest 
of modern fabulists. Florian and others have followed him 
in vain. Born in 1621, he was one year older than his friend 
Moliere, but he survived the great master of French comedy 
twenty-two years. Although he was intimate with Racine, 
Boileau, and other great literary lights of the time, it is said 
that Moliere was one of the few who grasped the true literary 
significance and value of La Fontaine's work. Although he 
led a reckless life, his last years were given over to religious 
penance, and when he died the saintly, sweet-souled Fenelon 
lamented his death in eulogistic strain. 

La Fontaine was born at the historic site of Chateau- 
Thierry. There his father was superintendent of forests. 
The junior La Fontaine afterwards had an opportunity to 
fill his father's office, but the forestry service did not appeal 
to him. Indeed, nothing in the nature of labor or respon- 
sibility found favor in his eyes. He refused to bind himself 
to any kind of occupation, and finally fell to writing poetry. 
He dedicated his "Adonis" to the minister, Foquet, and was 
at once received into the minister's household. Upon the 
fall of the minister he was successively patronized by a 
number of rich and noble ladies who were delighted with the 
salacious tales he wrote after the manner of Boccaccio — the 
"Contes et nouvelles en vers." As he grew older he gradually 
abandoned his "Contes," and devoted his talents to the 
"Fables." 

No French writer of the seventeenth century has retained 
a more widespread and continuous popularity. The Fables 
have been translated into every language, and are now 
reckoned a part of the world's best literature. These 
writings display a certain pleasing intermixture of archness 
and vivacity with much solid and serious wisdom. He 



176 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

manifests a perfection of elegant beauty which almost rivals 
Phaedrus; although he is sometimes redundant, and often 
lacks the perspicuity and ease of his Roman model, whom 
he greatly excels, however, in the richness of his humor, 
and in his versatile amiability. His beauties are thus sum- 
marized by a modern critic, who says of his Fables: "The 
graceful liveliness of their narration, the unrestrained natural- 
ism of their description, the homely wisdom of their un- 
obtruded moral, the boldness of their covert political teaching 
(especially in later years), the shrewd analysis and observa- 
tion of human motive, has been a perpetual delight to genera- 
tions." Upon the whole, his Fables may be said to in some 
measure make amends for the shocking impropriety of his 
"Contes," which were often too highly seasoned for even the 
Grand Monarch himself, who made La Fontaine promise to 
be good before consenting to his election to the Academy. 
He was a roistering, mad-cap rake, but a good fellow withal, 
and could say things that stick in the memory. Here is 
one: "Every newspaper editor owes tribute to the devil." 
And he might have added — but why pursue a subject so 
painful? At any rate, as he says elsewhere, "Nothing can 
satisfy the fastidious." And again he says: "Beware so 
long as you live of judging people by appearances" — 

Garde- toi, tant que tu vivras, 
De juger des gens sur la mine! 

Another phrase which has become a proverb: "Better a 
living beggar than a buried emperor." Indeed, as Lessing 
tells us, in his "Nathan der Weise:" "The real beggar is 
the true and only king" — 

Der wahre Bettler ist 
Doch einzig und allein der wahre Koenig. 

Which suggests to us, as La Fontaine says in another fable, 
"In everything we ought to consider the end." And in 
another he says: "Alas! we see that the small have always 



VOLTAIRE 177 

suffered for the follies of the great." This, too, is very wise: 
"Gentleness succeeds better than violence." So, also: "We 
read on the forehead of those who are surrounded by a 
foolish luxury that Fortune sells what she is thought to give." 
But we cannot grasp La Fontaine merely in excerpts. One 
must read the Fables. 



IX. 
VOLTAIRE. 



Francois Arouet (who took the name of Voltaire), the 
son of a Paris notary, was born in 1694, and at the age of 
ten was sent to a Jesuit college, where he remained for seven 
years and attained a vast proficiency in the classics. His 
father destined him for the bar, and after leaving the Jesuit 
school, at the age of seventeen, he devoted three years to the 
study of law, but finally gave his whole thought to the classics. 
He began writing clever satires and graceful verses. Shortly 
after the death of Louis XIV., Voltaire was accused of writing 
satires against the Duke of Orleans. He was exiled from 
Paris, and upon his return was committed to the Bastile for 
a period of eleven months. While in prison he planned his 
Henriade, the leading epic poem of the French language, 
committing the lines to memory as he composed them, 
inasmuch as he was not permitted the use of writing ma- 
terials. 

For eight years after his release he remained in Paris, 
writing for the stage. His first tragedy, the (Edipus, in the 
manner of Sophocles, was a brilliant success. Because of a 
quarrel with a person of rank he was again committed to the 
Bastile, where he remained for six months, and was released 
only on condition that he leave France. He repaired to 
England, where he remained for two years and eight months, 
winning the favor of the King and Queen, and enjoying the 
companionship of the great literary personages of the time. 



178 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

While in England he published the Henriade, which celebrates 
the triumph of Henry IV. over the arms of the League. He 
now began his history of Charles XII. of Sweden, collecting 
the materials from the Swedish ambassador at the English 
court. 

Upon his return to Paris, Voltaire applied himself to 
financial speculation, and gained an independent fortune. 
But he did not cease to write, especially for the stage. He 
composed, in all, twenty-six tragedies, all of which met with 
a high degree of popular favor. His Zaire was popular on 
the Swedish stage for many years. Again brought into 
trouble because of his writings, he left Paris in 1734. Con- 
siderations of personal safety induced him to fix his residence 
at Cirey, near the French frontier. His income from his 
investments was now about $15,000 per year, a large sum 
for that day. He continued to reside at this place for fifteen 
years, leading a life of cultured ease, writing for the stage, 
and letting fly, in every direction, the shafts of his ridicule, 
flooding Europe with pamphlets, and making of himself, 
generally, an international character. Europe shook with 
his laughter; courts and kingdoms trembled at his frown. 

In July, 1750, he accepted the invitation of Frederick 
the Great to fix his residence at the court of Berlin, thus 
giving offense to the King of France. While at Berlin he 
completed his history of Louis XIV., his greatest historical 
work, which set up a new standard of historical composition 
in France. It was this work that caused Madame du 
Duffand to say of Voltaire, that "he has invented history." 
At the end of a little more than two years he quarreled with 
Frederick, and barely made his escape from Germany in 
safety. Louis XV. declined to permit his return to Paris. 
He now located in Switzerland, and his retreat near Geneva 
became a mecca for literary pilgrims from all lands. Among 
those who visited him here was Oliver Goldsmith. Here he 
lived for more than twenty years. 



VOLTAIRE 179 

Following the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, Voltaire wrote 
a poem entitled "The Disaster of Lisbon." In this poem, 
and in his novel, "Candide," he denies that all the events 
which take place in the universe form part of a divine plan. 
These works, together with his part in the "Encyclopaedia," 
and numerous pamphlets and satirical writings, brought 
upon him the charge of irreligion. 

At the age of eighty-four he visited Paris for the last 
time. He was received with the utmost enthusiasm. He 
was lionized by the multitude, and fawned upon by the great. 
A special meeting of the French Academy was held to deliver 
eulogies in his honor. At the Theatre Francaise he witnessed 
the first presentation of his tragedy "Irene," and his bust 
was publicly crowned on the stage, in his presence. He was 
carried to his coach in triumph on the shoulders of the crowd, 
and he returned to his apartments never to come forth again. 
He died May 30, 1778. Before his death he wrote these 
words: "I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating 
my enemies, and detesting superstition." 

While on this visit to Paris, Benjamin Franklin, the 
representative of the infant American republic, took his 
young grandson to Voltaire and besought his blessing upon 
the child. Voltaire placed his hands upon the boy's head 
and pronounced, in English, the words: "God and Liberty." 

Voltaire always denied the charge of atheism. He 
wrote to d'Alembert: "I want you to crush the Infamous. 
* * * You will understand that I mean superstition only. 
Religion I love and respect." But what did he mean by 
religion? In what sort of God did he believe? What was 
his moral code? Voltaire's private life was one of unrestrained 
license. He believed and practiced, from his earliest man- 
hood, the doctrine of "free love," continuously and persist- 
ently. While pleading for liberty and law, he was loyal to 
no government under the sun. What appeared to be a 
beacon-light of liberty in his hand, became an incendiary's 



180 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

torch in the hands of his followers. But he was one of the 
colossal figures of his day, and no writer, in any age of the 
world's history, ever did more to unsettle the minds of men. 
As Lord Macaulay said, in his essay on Frederick the Great: 
"Voltaire could not build; he could only pull down; he was 
the very Vitruvius of ruin. He has bequeathed to us not 
a single doctrine to be called by his name, not a single ad- 
dition to the stock of our positive knowledge. But no 
human teacher ever left behind him so vast and terrible a 
wreck of truths and falsehoods, of things noble and things 
base, of things useful and things pernicious." 

Voltaire was an adept at flashy epigram. Thus, his 
saying: "If there were no God, it would be necessary to 
invent him." As if the finite could invent the Infinite! 
Such remarks illustrate the shallowness of his philosophy. 
Nor do they prove his belief in God. They prove the con- 
trary. Such a phrase is on a par with Robert G. Ingersoll's 
blasphemous witticism: "An honest God is the noblest 
work of man." 

Voltaire's essay on epic poetry is good. Some of his 
tragedies are superb. It is worthy of remark that his 
tragedies, for the most part, display an exalted morality 
and a truly religious sentiment. His History of the Age 
of Louis XIV. is one of the greatest historical works ever 
produced in France. But his Henriade, the publication of 
which caused him to be hailed at the time as a second Virgil, 
has not survived the mature and sober judgment of posterity. 
Indeed, Voltaire is chiefly of interest now only as a mighty 
precursor of revolution; a revolution which enthroned in 
Paris a naked woman as the Goddess of Reason and engulfed 
Europe for twenty years in blood. But that sanguinary 
catastrophe would have found other heralds if Voltaire had 
never lived. It had to be. Where there are bastiles, and 
lese majestie, and lettres de cachet, where government is 
both tyrannical and corrupt, and society is rotten to the core, 



HUGO 181 

there must be reformation or there will be revolution. And 
France could not reform. It was too late. The disease 
had gone too far. The hour of dissolution approached; the 
hour of death for organized society had arrived; and only 
after death could a new life arise. 



x. 

HUGO. 



Victor Hugo was born in 1S02. the year in which Na- 
poleon Bonaparte was elected First Consul for life, and his 
career was prolonged to within fifteen years of the close of 
the nineteenth century. Reckoned in terms of American 
chronology, he was born one year before Thomas Jefferson 
accomplished the Louisiana Purchase, and he died in the 
first year of Grover Cleveland's first term as President of 
the United States. In his infancy the dying thunders of the 
first Revolution echoed in his ears, and he lived to see France 
recover from the crushing disaster of the Franco-Prussian 
War. His youth witnessed the splendors of the first Xapoleon, 
and his old age saw the sceptor fall from the nerveless hand 
of Xapoleon III. 

Hugo was thirteen years of age when the dream of the 
great Xapoleon was extinguished at Waterloo. He was a 
young man. distinguishing himself in literary work, when the 
long reign of George III. of England came to an end. and was 
known among the most distinguished French authors when 
Queen Victoria assumed the throne of England in 1837. He 
flourished during nearly the whole period of her long and 
illustrious reign, was personally acquainted with nearly all 
the great English men of letters of the Victorian era, and 
survived nearly all the great names of that glorious literary 
period. He published his "Les Miserables" in 1862, just as 
the opening scenes were being enacted in the bloody drama 



182 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

of the great American Civil War, and although he had then 
lived longer than Shakespeare lived, he still had nearly a half 
century of active life before him. 

Modern history exhibits no other character who wit- 
nessed so mighty a succession of events, who bore an active 
and an honorable part in the stirring scenes through which 
he passed, and who was capable of intelligently observing, 
as he observed, the whole of the vast panorama of the Age 
of Revolutions. Little wonder that his 80th birthday, in 
1882, was celebrated throughout the civilized world! Rightly, 
indeed, did he inspire the sonnet of Alfred Tennyson, who 
thus saluted him: 

"Victor in poesy! Victor in romance! 

Cloud-weaver of phantasmal hopes and fears, 

French of the French, and lord of human tears! 
Child-lover, bard, whose fame-lit laurels g'ance, 
Darkening the wreaths of all that would advance 

Beyond our strait their claim to be thy peers! 

Weird Titan, by thy wintry weight of years 
As yet unbroken! Stormy voice of France,'' etc. 

Victor Hugo was the son of one of Napoleon's generals. 
His childhood was spent in Spain, and his early education 
was superintended by his mother, a cultured woman, from 
whom, no doubt, he drew his early predilections for literature. 
His 'Odes et Poesies" appeared in 1822, when he was but 
twenty years of age. Louis XVIII. at once granted him a 
pension, and the young poet promptly contracted a happy 
marriage, the beginning of a domestic life which was to 
sustain him in all his trials, and which proved a model of 
propriety, purity and peace. Throughout his long life his 
literary work never ceased. He is the author of many 
dramas novels and poems. To English readers he is best 
known for his novels, doubtless because of the difficulty of 
adequately rendering French verse into English; but among 



HUGO 183 

his own countrymen his claims to immortality, though amply 
sustained by his romances, will rest chiefly upon his verse. 
He was one of the greatest lyrical bards of all time. 

Living in the France of the nineteenth century, and 
possessing his ardent temperament, it was not to be expected 
that so great a genius could be dissociated from the political 
life of the period In 1848 he was a member of the Chamber 
of Deputies. Following Napoleon's coup d'etat of 1851 he 
went into exile, and in the next year appeared his "Napoleon 
the Little," a fierce attack on the king, followed by the 
"Les Chatiments," in the same satirical vein, which has 
since become a classic. In his exile on the Islands of Jersey 
and Guernsey he redoubled his literary efforts, and in 1862 
his vast romance of "Les Miserables" was published simul- 
taneously in ten languages, an event unexampled in the 
history of literature. In 1871, with the collapse of the 
Third Empire, he was back in France, and a member of the 
National Assembly at Bordeaux. In 1876 he was elected 
Senator for life. He was now poet laureate of the Third 
Republic. Advancing age brought no diminution of his 
literary powers, and he was at the height of his glory when 
he died, on May 22, 1885. Lanson wrote: "When Victor 
Hugo took his leave of the world, it seemed as if he had 
carried French poetry with him." His body was allowed 
to lie in state beneath the Arc de Triomphe. His funeral 
surpassed in magnificence any royal pageant, and he was 
interred in the pantheon, the relics of the patron saint of 
Paris, Sainte Genevieve, being removed to provide a place 
for his remains. 

C. C. Starkweather says: "We might demonstrate 
that he was the greatest lyrical poet of France. His great 
novels were prose epics." Another adds: "He is perhaps 
the greatest master of language that we know ; a great writer 
rather than a great author, and therefore the more sure of an 
enduring democratic fame. He has formed the rhetorical 



184 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

and poetic taste of three generations of French youth. All 
schools of French verse that have arisen in the last half- 
century have united to call him their father." 

Victor Hugo was not a great statesman. He was not 
a great philosopher. He had not the intellect of a Diderot 
nor the scholarship of a Renan. His early treatment of 
Sainte-Beuve showed a lack of magnanimity. He was not 
even a very successful politician. But he has touched the heart 
of the world by his intensity of pathos and his warmth of 
universal sympathy. He is a writer of great rhetorical 
richness and rhythmical beauty, and of limitless imagination. 
He is unsurpassed in vivid descriptive power. In sheer 
tempestuous force of expression we do not know his master. 
His literary style is in the highest degree oratorical, and we 
therefore naturally find him to be an orator second to no 
Frenchman of his generation. His oration upon the centenary 
of Voltaire, in 1878, is a masterpiece of eloquence. His 
oration on the death of Honore de Balzac is almost as great. 
A fine specimen of his forensic power is found in his oration 
against capital punishment. In 1851 his son, the publisher 
of a newspaper, was prosecuted for lack of respect for the 
laws, because of his report of a legal execution which occurred 
in circumstances peculiarly brutal. Victor Hugo defended 
his son before a jury. His speech stands to this day as 
probably the most powerful arraignment of the death penalty 
that ever fell from the lips of man. 

He referred to the cruel and vengeful laws of capital 
punishment as "those laws that dip the finger in human blood 
to write the commandment, Thou shalt not kill ; those impious 
laws that make one lose faith in humanity when they strike 
the guilty, and that cause one to doubt God when they 
smite the innocent." But the thrilling climax of this won- 
derful effort was reached when he said: "Yes, I declare it, 
this old and unwise law of retaliation, this law which requires 
blood for blood, I have combatted it all my life — all my 



HUGO 185 

life, gentlemen of the jury, and as long as I have breath I 
will combat it; with all my efforts as a writer I will combat it, 
and with all my acts and votes as a legislator; I declare it 
(here he pointed to a crucifix hanging on the wall of the 
court room) before that Victim of the death penalty who is 
there, who sees us and who hears us! I swear it before 
that cross, where, two thousand years ago, as an everlasting 
testimony for generations to come, human law nailed the 
Law Divine!" 

Hugo was also an adept in the use of the crayon. The 
masterwork of his artistry in this regard is his "Execution of 
John Brown." The volatile French author had been deeply 
affected by the anti-slavery movement in the United States. 
When John Brown was sent to the gallows, Hugo summoned 
his crayon in aid of his pen, and produced the gruesome 
sketch of a tattered figure dangling from a gibbet in the 
moonlight. He inscribed it "Pro Christo sicut Christus" — 
and under it he wrote the single word "Ecce." The drawing 
created a profound sensation in America, and in the early 
part of the Civil War it was used throughout the Northern 
States in aid of recruiting. He hated slavery as he hated 
capital punishment. Later he wrote: "The scaffold is the 
friend of slavery. The shadow of a gallows is projected 
over the fratricidal war of the United States;" and he referred 
to "this monstrous penalty of death, the glory of which it 
is to have raised upon the earth two crucifixes, that of Jesus 
Christ in the old world and that of John Brown in the new." 



PART SIX 

GREAT GERMAN AUTHORS 



I. Goethe. 

II. Schiller. 

III. Lessing. 

IV. Kant. 

V. RlCHTER. 

VI. Klopstock. 

VII. WlELAND. 

VIII. Herder. 

IX. Heine. 

X. Weber. 



(187) 



From 1780 to 1830 Germany has produced all the ideas of our 
historic age; and for half a century still, perhaps for a whole 
century, our great work will be to think them out again. * * * 
The philosophic German genius, which, having engendered a new 
metaphysics, theology, poetry, literature, linguistic science, an 
exegesis, erudition, descends now into the sciences and continues 
its evolution. No more original spirit, more universal, more fertile 
in consequences of every scope and species, more capable of trans- 
forming and reforming everything, has appeared for three hundred 
years. It is of the same order as that of the Renaissance and of 
the Classical Age. It, like them, connects itself with the great 
works of contemporary intelligence, appears in all civilized lands, 
is propagated with the same inward qualities, but under different 
forms. It, like them, is one of the epochs of the world's history. 

— (Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, "History of English Liter- 
ature;" Bk. V., Chap. IV.; translated from the French, 
by Henri Van Laun.) 



(188) 



GOETHE 189 



GOETHE. 

The German Apollo, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the 
greatest literary genius of the Germanic race, is, after Aristotle, 
the world's most perfect specimen of the universal mind. 
He is of the select company of the super-great. "Of great 
men among so many millions of noted men," said that great 
Englishman, Thomas Carlyle, "it is computed that in our 
time there have been but two; one in the practical, another 
in the speculative province: Napoleon Bonaparte and 
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — Goethe intrinsically of much 
more unquestionable merit." 

Goethe united in rare degree the pristine fires of Homer, 
the melancholy grandeur of Dante, and the subtle witchery 
of Shakespeare. But he possessed a perennial freshness of 
fancy and a certain sweetness of melody, combined with a 
statuesque dignity all his own. In sheer force and scope of 
intellect he surpasses any man who ever dipped a pen in the 
ethereal fountains of immortal verse. He was, in very truth, 
the soul of his century. The learned French critic, Taine, 
calls him "the master of all modern minds," and "the father 
and promoter of all lofty modern ideas." Another of the 
most brilliant minds of France, Madame de Stael, has ob- 
served: "Goethe may be taken as the representative of all 
German literature. He unites everything which distinguishes 
Germany, and nothing is so remarkable as a kind of im- 
aginative power, in which Italians, English, or French, have 
no part." 

This prince of poesy was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main 
Aug. 28, 1749, the son of lawyer who was a man of wealth and 
position. His mother was a woman of rare talent, and her in- 
fluence upon the development of Goethe's genius may be 
readily traced. From her, in large measure, he imbibed the 
gift of story-telling and his precocious fondness for the 



190 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

classics. At the tender age of eight he had already acquired 
some knowledge of Greek, Latin, French and Italian, and he 
later perfected himself in Hebrew. In vain did Goethe's 
father seek to bind the towering intellect of this young mental 
giant with the meshes of the law. He studied law, indeed, 
but it was the law of life, the law of light. He soon passed 
beyond the barren confines of civil jurisprudence to the laws 
of time and space and planetary motion, to the laws of growth 
and decay, of beauty and of truth; of the airy filaments of 
thought, elementary spirits — "film of flame who flit and wave 
in eddying motion! birth and the grave, an infinite ocean, a 
web ever growing, a life ever glowing, ply at Time's whizzing 
loom, and weave the vesture of God" (Faust, Sc. 1) ; of the law, 
indeed, as Richard Hooker saw it — "Of Law there can be no 
less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, 
her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and 
earth do her homage — the very least as feeling her care, and 
the greatest as not exempted from her power." 

After a few years at Leipsic, Goethe was sent to complete 
his education at Strasburg. Here he met Herder, who exerted 
a powerful influence upon his literary character. Among the 
incidents of his student life at Strasburg, Goethe tells us that 
Herder upon one occasion produced a German translation of 
Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," which Herder insisted 
upon reading aloud to a select group of students before per- 
mitting them to peruse it. The touching English tale, 
classic in its simplicity, made a deep impression upon the 
sensitive soul of Goethe. From his earliest youth he had 
been producing lyrics and love-songs of great sweetness and 
beauty, but attempted no great serious work until he left 
the university. 

Shortly after his return from Strasburg, in 1772, he pub- 
lished his "Goetz von Berlichingen." Its success was wide- 
spread and immediate. He was at once acknowledged as the 
foremost poet of Germany. "Goetz" was translated by 



GOETHE 191 

Walter Scott, and soon gained a European fame. Soon after 
this triumph Goethe met the young prince Karl August of 
Weimar, a meeting which ripened into a friendship of fifty- 
five years, and which was to be severed only by death. 

In 1774 Goethe's "Sorrows of Werther" appeared. It 
took Europe by storm. When Napoleon Bonaparte visited 
Goethe at Weimar in 1806, after the battle of Jena, he told 
the poet that he had read his "Sorrows of Werther" seven 
times. Napoleon was so impressed upon this occasion that, 
addressing Goethe, he exclaimed: "Vous etes un homme" — 
You are a man! He afterward invited the German poet to 
Paris and decorated him with the Legion of Honor. 

Karl August became Grand Duke of Saxe-W r eimar in 
1775, and at once invited Goethe to become a member of his 
court. The poet accepted the post of Privy Councillor, and 
became, successively, Minister of Finance and Prime Minister. 
Weimar at once became the literary center of Germany, if 
not of Europe, and here the genius of Goethe shone with 
undimmed splendor for fifty-seven years — until his death, 
in 1832. In 1825 the fiftieth anniversary of his residence at 
W T eimar was celebrated, all Europe joining in the jubilee. 
A medal was struck in England, bearing an inscription from 
one of his recent poems, "Ohne Hast, Ohne Rast" — without 
haste, without rest — and was sent to him with a letter signed 
by Southey, Wordsworth, Carlyle, Scott, Lockhart, and others. 

When he had been at Wiemar for more than a decade, 
Goethe procured from Karl August an extended leave of 
absence. He now undertook his famous Italian journey 
and remained in Italy for two years. Many of his finest 
creations are the fruits of his Italian tour. Upon his return he 
published, in rapid succession, his dramas "Egmont," "Iphi- 
genia" and "Tasso," together with many poems of an un- 
usual character. 

In 1794 he formed the friendship of Schiller, a friendship 
which lasted until the death of Schiller in 1805. "Literature 



192 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

has no more perfect relation to show between two great men 
than this between Goethe and Schiller," says Hjalmar H. 
Boyesen, in his "Life of Goethe." "No jealousy, no passing 
disagreement, clouded the beautiful serenity of their inter- 
course. They met, as it were, only upon the altitudes of the 
soul, where no small and petty passions have the power to 
reach. Their correspondence, which has been published, is 
a noble monument to the worth of both. The earnestness 
with which they discuss the principles of their art, the pro- 
found conscientiousness and high-bred courtesy with which 
they criticize each other's works, and their generous rivalry in 
the loftiest excellence, have no parallel in the entire history 
of literature." 

In 1796 Goethe published his "Wilhelm Meister," which 
added greatly to his fame. This work was translated into 
English by Thomas Carlyle. In the following year appeared 
"Hermann und Dorothea," one of the sweetest of pastoral 
tales. But, as is well known, Goethe's greatest work is 
"Faust." The "History of Dr. Johann Fausten" made its 
first appearance in literature at the book-fair held in Frank- 
fort-on-the-Main, Goethe's home city, in the year 1587. 
In the next year the theme was seized upon in England by 
Marlowe, who made it the basis of his drama, "The Tragedy 
of Dr. Faustus." In Germany the same subject was twice 
attempted by Lessing. Friederich Muller dramatized it, and 
Kliriger made it the subject of a romance. 

Goethe, in 1773, just one hundred and eighty-six years 
from the date of the story's first appearance in the city of his 
birth, began work upon his "Faust," which was to be the 
subject of his thought for almost sixty years, and thereafter 
to become the monument of his undying fame. He published 
the first part in 1808, and the second part, completed when 
he had but a few months of life before him, was not published 
until after his death. When he sealed the manuscript of the 
second part he remarked that it was of little consequence 



GOETHE 193 

what he did thereafter, or if he did anything at all; that his 
life's work was done. His last words were these: ''Let 
the light enter." And so he winged his flight to the regions 
of eternal light. "In him," we may say with Bayard Taylor, 
"there is no unfilled promise, no fragmentary destiny; he 
stands as complete and symmetrical as the Parthenon;" 
and the world with one accord agrees with George Henry 
Lewes that Goethe truly earns the title "Great." 

Goethe by no means confined his work to literature and 
art. His intellect was truly Protean. He was one of the most 
profound scientific students of his day. He wrote much upon 
scientific subjects. He made discoveries in anatomy, botany 
and geology. He made valuable studies in optics. His 
intellect was omnivorous. Nothing was too lofty for its 
reach, or too deep for its mighty grasp. "He saw nature in 
her grand unity," as Prof. Boyesen says, "and his penetrating 
vision saw the great causal chain which unites her most 
varied phenomena." Goethe himself has said: "As a poet 
I am a polytheist; as a naturalist, a pantheist; as a moral 
man, a deist; and in order to express my mind I need all 
these forms." Writing of the period of Goethe, in his "History 
of English Literature," M. Taine, the French critic and 
philosopher, says: "The human mind, quitting its individual 
sentiments to adopt sentiments really felt, and finally all 
possible sentiments, found its pattern in the great Goethe, 
who by his Tasso, Iphigenia, Divan, his second part of Faust, 
became a citizen of all nations and a contemporary of all 
ages, seemed to live at pleasure at every point of time and 
place, and gave an idea of universal mind." 

His critical faculty was most astonishing, and his literary 
judgments will forever stand as the law from which there is no 
appeal. We may glimpse his method in the following utter- 
ance: "The prime quality of the real critic," he writes, "is 
sympathy. There is no other approach to a man or a race. 
Men rarely understand that which they hate, but they rarely 



194 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

fail to understand that which they love." All which is as 
true as the Golden Rule. 

Goethe has been blamed for his want of "patriotism." 
When the French hordes were ravaging the lands beyond the 
Rhine, when the world was shaken with revolutions on every 
hand, when the very ground thrilled beneath the tread of the 
German legions marching to the defense of Fatherland, when 
all Germany was ringing with the war-songs of Koerner, 
Goethe's lyre was silent — or rather let us say that his lyre, 
like that of Anacreon, had no "bloody string." 

Let Goethe answer. He does answer, in these words to 
Soret: "I am no warlike nature, and have no warlike sense; 
war-songs would have been a mask which would have fitted 
my face badly. I have never affected anything in poetry. 
I have never uttered anything which I have not experienced 
and which has not urged me to production. I have composed 
love-songs when I loved! How could I write songs of hate 
without hating? And, between ourselves, I did not hate the 
French, although I thanked God when we were rid of them. 
How could I, to whom culture and barbarism alone are of 
importance, hate a nation which is among the most culti- 
vated of the earth, and to which I owe so much of my own 
culture? Altogether, national hatred is a peculiar thing, and 
you will always find it strongest at the lowest stage of cul- 
ture." Here is the soul of German culture speaking to the 
world to-day, as it spoke a hundred years ago! For culture 
speaks all languages and flies all flags. Here Goethe rises 
to the true height of his majestic character, lifting the hand 
only in blessing — not to strike! So do we view him now, in 
the mellow light of a hundred years. Casting its rays across 
the abyss of a century, the shining soul of Goethe, gleaming 
from his far Olympian height, with golden voice still pleads 
for beauties that shall never die, for forms that saber-thrusts 
shall never mar, for songs that ring above the battlecry, 
for culture that is born of peace. 



SCHILLER 195 

II. 

SCHILLER. 

From the perusal of Goethe the mind naturally turns to 
Schiller, the second name in the glorious galaxy of Weimar, 
and Germany's "poet of liberty." Johann Christoph Frieder- 
ich von Schiller was born at Marbach in 1759 (the year in 
which the poet Robert Burns was born), and was ten years 
younger than Goethe. 

"These names," says a recent writer, speaking of Goethe 
and Schiller, "are household words. Prolific as each of these 
immortals .was, more has been written about them than they 
ever wrote about anything. Wiseacres have 'peeped and 
botanized,' pedants have oracularly analyzed, critics have 
viewed and reviewed. It is as if one should try to put the 
Andes or the Himalayas under a microscope, as if one should 
try to catch the roar of Niagara in a phonograph. Goethe 
and Schiller: they stand side by side, great beacon-lights of 
German poesy. And not German poesy alone. They are 
Titans of world-genius, crowned kings of universal literature, 
known to every schoolboy and poet and philosopher of two 
continents. Safe in the heart of humanity, the ages will be 
their heirs. They are on the heights with Homer and Sopho- 
cles, Milton and Shakespeare, 'like gods together,' treasured 
by mankind." 

Schiller's father, an honest and industrious man, but 
in humble circumstances, had been a surgeon in the Bavarian 
army, in the service of the Duke of Wurtemburg, and was 
earning his living as superintendent of the Duke's gardens 
when the poet was born. Young Schiller was intended for 
the pulpit, but was obliged to forego that ambition when 
conscripted for the ducal military academy at Stuttgart, where 
he was subjected to an irksome and hateful military discipline, 
so senseless, brutalizing and repulsive as to kindle the fires 
of rebellion in his poetic soul. He sought surcease in the 



196 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

writings of Rousseau, and devoured with avidity Wieland's 
translation of Shakespeare and Goethe's "Sorrows of Wer- 
ther." Completely at war with his surroundings, and sover- 
eignly detesting the noxious militaristic atmosphere of the 
time and place, he yearned to strike a blow for freedom, and 
thus it was that literary, ambitions gripped his heart. 

After some years of mental anguish in the military 
straight-jacket, assuaged only by the literary labors which he 
pursued in secret, Schiller was graduated from the academy, 
and went forth at a salary of $8 per month, as an army surgeon, 
in the service of the Duke whom he so cordially hated. But 
the hour of retribution was near. On January 13, 1782, 
Schiller's first play, "The Robbers," was performed at Mann- 
heim. It was a declaration of war against civilization as it 
then existed, and was the first bugle note in Schiller's life- 
long battle cry of freedom, the echoes of which have reverber- 
ated in German ears for more than a hundred years. Schiller 
journeyed secretly to Mannheim to witness the performance 
of his play. He was undetected. He repeated the offense, 
and the Duke placed him under arrest for a period of two 
weeks and promulgated an order designed to prevent Schiller 
from writing anything in future excepting medical treatises. 
The Duke could as easily have stopped a whirlwind with a 
sword- thrust. Schiller asked to be released from the ducal 
service. The Duke refused, and Schiller fled to Mannheim 
September 17, 1782. 

Still pursued by the Duke, he found refuge on the private 
estate of Frau von Wolzogen. In this retreat he remained 
until July, 1783, working diligently the while, completing his 
"Love and Intrigue," and formulating his great drama, 
"Don Carlos." He then returned to Mannheim to accept 
the post of "poet of the theatre," under contract to write 
three dramas a year. After an unsatisfactory and rather 
precarious existence for nearly two years, he left Mannheim, 
in 1785, going first to Darmstadt, where he first met Goethe's 



SCHILLER 197 

patron, Karl August, "the German Maecenas," who gave 
him an honorary title as Ducal Court Counselor. Thence 
he betook himself to Leipsic, where he spent some time with 
Koerner and Huber. He removed with Koerner to Dresden. 
There he completed his "Don Carlos" and wrote some of his 
best poems. The publication of "Don Carlos" greatly aug- 
mented Schiller's reputation, especially in France, where it was 
thought to accord with the spirit of the French Revolution, 
and in consequence the honor of French citizenship was 
formally bestowed on Schiller in 1792. 

In July, 1787, Schiller repaired to Weimar, then famous 
as the German literary capital. Goethe was still absent on his 
Italian journey, and they did not meet until 1788. They did 
not become friends until some years after their first meeting, 
Schiller having criticised Goethe's "Egmont," and Goethe 
having passed some strictures on "The Robbers." 

Following the completion of "Don Carlos" Schiller first 
essayed historical writing, in his "Revolt of the Netherlands." 
The work is characteristic of his mode of thought. Free- 
dom breathes in every line. Owing to the influence of Goethe, 
Schiller was now appointed as a professor of history in the 
University of Jena. His lectures were immediately popular. 
While at Jena he wrote his great historical work, "History 
of the Thirty Years' War." He had now set a new style for 
historical writing in Germany, and had in some measure 
accomplished for German literature what Voltaire did for 
French literature in his "Age of Louis XIV." But the chief 
value of Schiller's vast historical labors came from the knowl- 
edge they imparted to him in regard to the great characters 
and events of that stormy period. Had he not composed 
this history it is doubtful if he could have written "Wallen- 
stein." At any rate, there is little likelihood that he would 
have done so. 

Notwithstanding his fame, Schiller s debts were press ng, 
and he began to suffer frcm overwork. He 'ndu'ged a fatal 



198 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

habit of working all night, and sleeping only in the forenoon. 
At this juncture friends came to his rescue with financial aid. 
He relinquished his professorship, but redoubled his efforts on 
"Wallenstein," in which he was aided by the constructive 
criticisms of Goethe. It was at this time, also, that he edited 
with Goethe the journal, "Die Horen.' They published 
together their "Xenien" in 1797, and in this work they com- 
pletely silenced the heavy artillery of all their critics. Within 
the two or three years following, Schiller produced "The 
Song of the Bell," "The Crane of Ibycus," and several other 
famous poems of rare beauty. 

In 1799 Schiller completed the great trilogy of "Wallen- 
stein," the best acting play and the greatest purely tragic 
work ever written in the German language. Goethe said: 
"The work is so great that there exists no equal to it." It 
was certainly the greatest drama written in the eighteenth 
century, and among modern dramatic authors it has made 
Schiller's position secure in the rank of Goethe and Shake- 
speare. 

In 1800 his "Mary Stuart" appeared. So great was his 
reputation abroad, following the publication of this play, 
that a London theatre sought to contract with him for the 
first production of all his future dramas. The "Maid of 
Orleans" was produced in 1801, followed by the "Bride of 
Messina," a Greek tragedy in the manner of Aeschylus and 
Sophocles. In 1802 he received a patent of nobility from the 
Emperor Francis II., which he accepted "for the sake of wife 
and children." He was now one of the great world-characters. 
Madame de Stael paid him a visit in 1803. He complained 
of her attentions as "suffocating," and when she had gone 
he wrote to Goethe that he felt as if he had just recovered 
from a severe illness. 

Schiller was invited to Berlin in 1804, and was received 
with all but royal magnificence. His tragedies were enacted 
at the theatres, and he was lionized by both the people and 



SCHILLER 199 

the court. This triumphal visit to Berlin was much like 
Voltaire's final return to Prais. But Schiller could not be 
prevailed upon to remain at the Prussian court. He preferred 
the intellectual capital at Weimar to any political capital 
whatsoever, and wisely valued the society of Goethe above 
that of courts and kings. 

His last work was the drama of "William Tell." The 
theme had been suggested to him by Goethe. It was a parting 
blow at autocracy. His health continued to fail because of 
his excessive labors, and he died a martyr to his art, on May 
9, 1805, at the age of forty-five, at the height of his fame and 
in the prime of his inte'lectual powers. 

It was in "William Tell" that Schiller wrote (IV., 1.): 
"The storm is master. Man, as a ball, is tossed 'twixt winds 
and billows." From earliest childhood Schiller was attracted 
by the grander and more terrible phenomena of nature. He 
loved to see the forked lightnings leap and play, and hear 
the crashing thunders roll, while the roaring wind was music 
to his soul. This characteristic remained with him through 
life, and the stormy elements attended him, as a kindred soul, 
in death. He was buried shortly after midnight. The night 
was dark and threatening. Storm-clouds filled the sky. 
When the bier was placed beside the open grave, for a moment 
all was calm. The moon shone brightly on the coffin. The 
body was lowered to its last resting place. Again the sky 
was overcast, the tempest burst, the winds howled, and the. 
storm-king sang a mighty requiem above the poet's tomb. 
So passed the spirit of the immortal Schiller, the soul of 
German tragedy. His last conscious act was to kiss his 
faithful wife, to whom he had been supremely devoted, and 
his last words were "Happier — ever happier!" So died he 
who said: 

Der Mensch ist frei geschaffen, ist frei 
Und wurd' er in Ketten geboren — 
"Man is created free, and is free, even though born in chains." 



200 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

III. 

LESSING. 

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, "the father of German 
criticism," and, in point of time, the first among German 
classical writers, was born at Kamenz, in Saxony, the son of 
a pastor of that city, by whom he, too, was intended for the 
ministry. At the age of seventeen he began attending the 
university at Leipsic, and was a precocious student. He soon 
tired of theological studies, and took up the study of medicine, 
telling his father that he "could be a preacher any day." 
For the present, however, he desired a wider range of study. 
From Leipsic he went to the university at Wittenberg. At 
both universities he displayed marked aptitude for literature. 

Lessing published a little volume of poems in 1748, after 
the manner of Anacreon. The next year he proceeded to 
Berlin. There he met Voltaire, who soon became his enemy. 
In 1755 he published his tragedy "Miss Sara Simpson," a 
drama based upon the family life, and tending to exalt the 
middle and lower classes. It was at once successful. But it 
was not until four years later that he really began his literary 
career. 

In 1759, the year in which Schiller was born, Lessing 
commenced publishing his "Literary Letters," a task which 
occupied a great part of his time for the next seven years. 
The "Literary Letters" mark the beginning of the classical 
period of German literature. He left Berlin for a time to 
become secretary to the Governor of Silesia. While at Breslau 
he published the drama "Mina von Barnhelm," one of the 
purest gems of German literature, and still regarded as a 
masterpiece. In 1766, after his return to Berlin, he began 
publishing his great treatise on aesthetic criticism, the "Lao- 
coon," only one- third of which was ever completed. While 
engaged on this work poverty compelled him to sell his library. 
He then went to Hamburg, where he was employed to aid in 



LESSING 201 

the establishment of a national theatre. He now began 
publishing his "Dramatic Notes," which were in some measure 
a continuation of the "Laocoon." These essays are marvels 
of literary taste and mental astuteness, and have won en- 
comiums from the masters of literary and dramatic criticism 
in all nations. 

In 1770 Lessing was made librarian at Wolfenbuttel, a 
position which he held until his death, eleven years later. 
Here he wrote the play, "Emile Galotti," the presentation of 
which was forbidden by the censor because of its political 
tendencies. At this time, also, he wrote "Nathan the Wise," 
which has been characterized as "a dramatic poem of tolera- 
tion," and which is still regarded as one of the most beautiful 
specimens of German composition. It is said that the piece 
was inspired by his friendship for Moses Mendelssohn, the 
Jewish philosopher and scholar, and grandfather of the great 
musician. Moses Mendelssohn and Lessing were born in the 
same year. 

Lessing visited Vienna in 1775, and was given such an 
ovation as was never before received by a German author. 
He then visited Italy, and found that his fame had preceded 
him there also. In 1781 he died, at the age of fifty-two. The 
last three years of his life were devoted to controversial 
writings which profoundly affected the literary and political 
thought of the day. He was a fearless advocate of the freedom 
of opinion, and declared it "better that error should 
be taught than freedom of thought stifled." Lessing was 
almost alone in his advocacy of free speech at the time, and 
he did for his generation what Milton had done for England. 

It is impossible to overestimate the value of Lessing's 
work in literary criticism. Unquestionably, he is Germany's 
foremost literary critic. Macaulay said that sixty years before 
his time Lessing was, "beyond dispute, the first critic of 
Europe." His critical essays prepared the way for Goethe 
and Schiller, while his philosophical writings, beyond all 



202 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

doubt, were of substantial aid in preparing the path for 
Kant and Fichte. Speaking of the "Laocoon," Goethe said: 
"That long misunderstood phrase, ut pictura poesis, was 
set aside. The distinction between the speaking and the 
plastic arts was clear. All the results of this glorious thought 
were revealed to us as by a lightning flash." 

With all his polemical wit and daring, with all his remorse- 
less logic and his cutting satire, Lessing is always broad, 
noble, tolerant, humane. There was nothing mean, low or 
narrow in his nature. No one can read his "Nathan the 
Wise" without being supremely impressed with a sense of 
the author's goodness, and the genuineness of his brave yet 
gentle heart. That play, indeed, is the sum of all his moral 
and philosophic teaching. When he makes his character 
say, in Act I., "For God rewards good deeds done here below — 
rewards them here" — he means just that, although he does 
not necessarily mean that the reward shall be paid in gold 
coin, or that it shall be paid immediately upon performance 
of the deed. When he says, in Act II., "Know this, that 
every country can produce good men," he means that, too, 
for he had said almost the same thing ten years before, when 
he wrote, in his essay on "Aristotle and Tragedy:" "I am 
convinced that no nation in the world has been specially 
endowed with any mental gift superior to that of other 
nations." Such thoughts show the magnanimous world- 
spirit of the man. 

Lessing's essays are models of a perfect expository style — 
clear, simple, logical, vigorous, concise and bold. His sen- 
tences are a net- work of close reasoning, compactly woven, 
and beautiful as a tapestry. His vehemence is not in his 
rhetoric, but in his thought; and in this respect his contro- 
versial writings often remind one of passages in Demos- 
thenes. He is Greek in his manner, his thought and his ideals, 
and evidently no one ever read to better purpose the great 
Greek authors. 



KANT 203 

IV. 

KANT. 

That vast intelligence known to the world as Immanuel 
Kant, "one of the greatest and most influential metaphysicians 
of all time," was born at Koenigsberg, Prussia, in 1724, and 
died there in 1804. He was never married. He never traveled. 
His eighty years were devoted to the peaceful pursuits of 
learning, and he never stirred from the precincts of the 
University of Koenigsberg, where he studied, wrote and 
taught. The adulation of the multitude and the flattery of 
the great were alike matters of indifference to him, and unlike 
other men of letters, he refused to visit other parts of the 
world. But he brought the world to his door. Madame de 
Stael said that, outside of Greek history, the world afforded 
no other example of such exclusive and supreme devotion to 
philosophical pursuits. 

"He lived to a great age," says George Henry Lewes, in 
his Biographical History of Philosophy, "and never once 
quitted the snows of murky Koenigsberg. There he pursued a 
calm and happy existence, meditating, professing and writing. 
He had mastered all the sciences; he had studied languages, 
and cultivated literature. He lived and died a type of the 
German professor: He rose, smoked, drank his coffee, wrote, 
lectured, took his daily walks always at the same hour. The 
cathedral clock, it was said, was not more punctual in its 
movements than Immanuel Kant." Herder, who attended 
some of his lectures, said that they were distinguished for 
wit and humor as well as moral purity and profound thought. 

At various times Kant lectured on logic, metaphysics, 
physics, politics, mathematics, anthropology, theology, peda- 
gogy, and mineralogy. He was first offered the chair of 
poetry in the university, but declined it because he did not 
regard himself as particularly qualified for the work. In 
1770 he was appointed to the chair of logic and metaphysics, 



204 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

which he retained during the remaining thirty-four years of 
his life. He wrote works on astronomy, physical geography, 
neural pathology, psychology, aesthetics, ethnography, anthro- 
pology, history, criticism, meteorology, politics, logic, peda- 
gogy and metaphysics. While his greatest achievements 
were in philosophy, his service to the physical sciences was 
hardly less valuable. It was Kant who first announced the 
theory that the solar system was developed from a primitive 
gaseous material with rotary motion, thus anticipating by 
thirty-five years the nebular hypothesis of Laplace. 

But Kant, like Plato, was greatest in his metaphysics. 
In this field he was supreme in his generation. The chief of 
his philosophical works is his "Critique of Pure Reason," 
the most monumental work in metaphysics since Locke 
promulgated his Essay on the Human Understanding. "Our 
suggestion," he says, "is similar to that of Copernicus in 
astronomy, who finding it impossible to explain the movements 
of heavenly bodies on the supposition that they turned round 
the spectator, tried whether he might not succeed better by 
supposing the spectator to revolve and the stars to remain at 
rest." This suggests Einstein's recent theory of relativity. 
Kant wrote this great work in a few months, but he had 
previously meditated upon it for a period of twelve years 
and did not begin the work of composition until his ideas 
were thoroughly fixed. 

It is evident that Kant was profoundly influenced by 
Hume, and that he sought by his massive structure to erect 
a bulwark against the skepticism of the English philosopher. 
Kant was not a skeptic; at least, he was not intentionally and 
avowedly so. But, for all that, the effect of his philosophy 
was to augment rather than to destroy skepticism. While 
he affirms the certitude of knowledge, he affirms, also, that 
knowledge is only relative. It is not strange, therefore, that 
philosophers claim to find in his system a scientific basis for 
skepticism. But Kant nobly vindicated the idea of duty. He 



KANT 205 

founded upon the veracity of consciousness a system of 
morals, the belief in a future state and in the existence of 
God. 

He was, as Robert Adamson said, in his essay on Kant, 
"The greatest philosopher of the eighteenth century." There 
will be no dissent from the statement of Thomas Carlyle 
that "His critical philosophy has been regarded as distinctly 
the greatest intellectual achievement of the century." Schlegel 
said: "In respect of its probable influence on the moral 
culture of Europe, it stands on a line with the Reformation." 
But his morals, it is believed, are better than his philosophy, 
and it is to be regretted if he has given skepticism a weapon 
with which to thwart so much that is beautiful, good and 
true. 

Personally, Kant was a man of great kindliness and 
austere morality. He was also a lover and advocate of political 
freedom. He expressed sympathy for the American Colonists 
in their fight for independence, and he also sympathized with 
the first Revolutionists of France. He was generous, honor- 
able and true. "Benevolence," said he, "is a duty. He who 
frequently practices it, and sees his benevolent intentions 
realized, at length comes to love him to whom he has done 
good. When, therefore, it is said, 'Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself,' it is not meant that thou shalt love him 
first, and do good to him in consequence of that love, but, 
thou shalt do good to thy neighbor, and this thy beneficence 
will engender in thee that love to mankind which is the fullness 
and consummation of the inclination to do good." 

In the same spirit, he adds: "Whether mankind be 
found worthy of love or not, a practical principle of good will 
is a duty mutually owed by all men to one another." 

"Act always," he advises, "so that the immediate motive 
of thy will may become a universal rule for all intelligent 
beings." 



206 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Again he says: "There can be no more fundamental and 
more certain mode of pleasing the invisible power which 
governs the world, at least in order to be happy in another 
world, than virtuous conduct." 

These are truths that matter; thoughts that count; 
grains of pure gold, without which all philosophy is but 
dross. They are the bed-rock of the life spiritual, the corner- 
stone in the adamantine temple of the soul. They need no 
Critique of Reason to infuse into them the breath of life, for 
they are of the very essence of the life that never dies. The 
cold embellishments of syllogistic logic can neither help nor 
hinder here, where the grandest ratiocinations of the human 
intellect have reached their highest point. 

In De Quincey's "Last Days of Immanuel Kant," we 
find the great philosopher facing the end, with the serenity of 
an untroubled mind. "I do not fear death," said he, "for I 
know how to die. I assure you that if I knew this night was 
to be my last, I would raise my hands and say, 'God be 
praised!' The case would be far different if I had ever caused 
the misery of any of His creatures." 

"Kant is the great renovator of philosophy," says Albert 
Schwegler, in his "History of Philosophy;" "he reduced once 
more to unity and totality the one-sided efforts of those who 
had preceded him. He stands in some special relation, either 
antagonistic or harmonious, to all others — to Locke no less 
than to Hume, to the Scottish philosophers no less than to 
the earlier English and French moralists, to the philosophy 
of Liebnitz and Wolff, as well as to the materialism of the 
French and the utilitarianism of the German clearing up 
period." 



RICHTER 207 

V. 
RICHTER. 

Jean Paul Richter was a sentimental prose writer, 
humorist and novelist, whose works are edited in thirty-four 
volumes. He does not belong to the German classical school, 
and was rather frowned upon by Goethe and Schiller, al- 
though Goethe praised his pedagogical work, "Levana," 
for "the boldest virtues, without the least excess." 

Richter was born at the village of Wunseidel, in the 
Franconian mountains, in 1763. His early life was a bitter 
struggle with poverty in its hardest forms. In 1781 he went 
to Leipsic to study theology. But within three years he was 
obliged to flee to avoid the importunities of his creditors. 
Meanwhile he had published the satire, "Greenland Lawsuits," 
which was little appreciated on account of its extravagant 
eccentricity of style. In 1789 he wrote "The Devil's Papers," 
but could not find a publisher. His novels, "The Invisible 
Lodge" and "Hesperus" were published, respectively, in 
1793 and 1794. In 1796 he visited Weimar, and was hospitably 
received by Herder, the constant friend of every aspiring 
genius, whom he warmly eulogized in his "Aesthetics," 
published in 1804. Although he was not warmly beamed upon 
by its greater luminaries, Richter's visit to Weimar was 
rather successful, and from that time forth his fortunes took 
a turn for the better. After a few more years of wandering, 
he settled permanently at Bayreuth, and remained there the 
remaining twenty-one years of his life, dying in 1825. 

Carlyle first introduced Richter to English readers, by 
mention of his essays, and by his translation of "Quintus 
Fixlein," in 1827. DeQuincey published a "Life of Richter" 
in 1845, and selections from his writings were published by 
Lady Chatterton in 1859. Richter is, indeed, best read in 
excerpts, rather than in any of his completed works. Carlyle 
said of him: "There is probably not in any modern language 



208 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

so intricate a writer; abounding, without measure, in obscure 
allusions, in the most twisted phraseology; perplexed into 
endless entanglements and dislocations, parenthesis within 
parenthesis; not forgetting elisions, sudden whirls, quips, 
conceits, and all manner of inexplicable crochets; the whole 
moving on in the gayest manner." But he had a deep and 
tender sympathy, a rich imagination and a certain delicacy 
of touch, which, with his other human qualities, have made 
his place secure within the circle of his admirers, by whom he 
is called "Der Einzige"— "The Unique." 

Richter, we repeat, is best read in fine passages. Few of 
his works hold the interest, but many of them contain para- 
graphs of the rarest beauty, embellished to the highest degree 
of ornateness, sublimely poetic, and deeply philosophic, or 
abounding in the practical wisdom of everyday life. Thus: 
"A man takes contradiction and advice much more easily 
than people think, only he will not bear it when violently 
given, even though it be well founded. Hearts are flowers; 
they remain open to the softly falling dew, but shut up in the 
violent down-pour of rain." Was there ever a more beautiful 
and effective simile than that presented in the last sentence? 
And here is another: "A Christian man can look down like 
an eternal sun upon the autumn of his existence; the more 
sand has passed through the hour-glass of life, the more 
clearly can he see through the empty glass. Earth, too, is 
to him a beloved spot, a beautiful meadow, the scene of his 
childhood's sports, and he hangs on this mother of our first 
life with the love with which a bride, full of childhood's 
recollections, clings to a beloved mother's breast, the evening 
before the day on which she resigns herself to the bride- 
groom's heart." 

Now let us read what he says of authorship: "Never 
write on a subject without first having read yourself full on 
it; and never read on a subject till you have thought yourself 
hungry on it." Horace said nothing better than that in the 



RICHTER 209 

"Ars Poetica." And nothing, we believe, in either the Chris- 
tian or the Pagan moralists, is better put than this: 

"Nothing is more moving to man than the spectacle of 
reconciliation; our weaknesses are thus indemnified, and are 
not too costly, being the price we pay for the hour of for- 
giveness; and the archangel, who has never felt anger, has 
reason to envy the man who subdues it. When thou forgivest, 
the man who has pierced thy heart stands to thee in the 
relation of the sea-worm that perforates the shell of the 
mussell, which straightway closes the wound with a pearl." 

Behold, now his pretty picture of Hope: "Hope is the 
ruddy morning of joy, recollection is its golden tinge; but the 
latter is wont to sink amid the dews and dusky shades of 
twilight; and the bright blue day which the former promises, 
breaks, indeed, but in another world, and with another sun." 

The following stern call to the duty of the hour reads 
like one of the oracular utterances of Carlyle: "Be every 
minute, man, a full life to thee! Despise anxiety and wishing, 
the future and the past! If the second-pointer can be no 
road-pointer, with an Eden for thy goal, the month-pointer 
will be still less so — for thou livest not from month to month, 
but from second to second! Enjoy thy existence more than 
thy manner of existence, and let the dearest object of thy 
consciousness be this consciousness itself! Make not the 
present a means of thy future; for this future is nothing but 
a coming present; and the present which thou despisest was 
once a future which thou desiredst." 

Richter, with all his shimmering metaphor and pictured 
fantasies, abounds in deep and sober thoughts, thoughts 
that rise and set like distant suns, moving in the orbit of 
eternity. Such a thought as this would be not unworthy of 
Plato: "A man can even here be with God, so long as he 
bears God within him. We should be able to see without 
sadness our most holy wishes fade like flowers, because the 
sun above us still forever beams, eternally makes new, and 



210 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

cares for all ; and a man must not so much prepare for eternity, 
as plant eternity in himself: eternity, serene, pure, full of 
depth, full of light, and of all else." 



VI. 
KLOPSTOCK. 

Frederich Gottlieb Klopstock (born 1724, died 1803) has 
been called "the German Milton." He studied theology at 
Jena and Leipsic. After leaving the university he followed, 
for some years, the occupation of private tutor. 

The first three cantos of his "Messiah," a Christian epic, 
were published in 1748, at Langensalza. The poem was 
completed in 1752, at Copenhagen, where its author was a 
guest of the King of Denmark. The publication of the first 
three cantos had attracted the attention of Bodmer, the 
Swiss critic, then an eminent authority on German letters, 
who had noted the Miltonic character of Klopstock's work. 

Klopstock's dramatic productions are of an inferior 
order; overwrought, overdrawn, and theatrically impossible. 
His fame rests almost solely upon his "Messiah," a poem 
which, although hardly equal as a whole to the "Paradise 
Lost," abounds in fervid religious sentiment and discloses a 
rich vocabulary, with much beautiful poetic imagery. His 
representation of the characters of the Disciples, from this 
poem, has been much admired for its delicate lacery of lan- 
guage and its sweetly pious thought. We quote from Roscoe's 
translation : 

"Now the last sleep, 
Last of his earthly slumbers, gently sealed 
The Savior's eyes. In heavenly peace it came, 
Descending from the sanctuary of God 
In the still softness of the evening air, 
The Savior slept, and Selia meanwhile 



KLOPSTOCK 211 

To the assembly with these words approached. 
Say who are they, whose eyes, bedimmed with grief, 
Silent ascend the mountain? Sorrow's hand 
Their face has touched, yet harmed not — ever such 
The grief of nobler souls ; haply some friend 
Wrapt in the silent arms of death they mourn, 
Their like in virtue. Then the Seraph thus: 
Those are the holy twelve, O Selia, 
Chosen by the Mediator." 

Selia, then, as the Disciples come into view, inquires 
concerning each of the "holy twelve," and is answered in 
turn by the guardian angles of the various Disciples. The 
picture thus presented, as the saints move in solemn review, 
like a heavenly constellation, is sublimely impressive, and is 
as beautiful and striking as the divine groups of Michelangelo 
in the Sistine Chapel. Nothing in Milton can be said to 
surpass it. The review closes with St. John, of whom it is 
said — 

11 * * * no fairer spirit 
On mortal man by the Creator's breath 
Was e'er bestowed, than the unspotted soul 
Of this disciple." 

And then the scene is finished with a group of angels hovering 
aloft — 

" * * * and with silent tenderness 

The seraphs o'er the loved disciple stood. . 

So stand three brothers o'er a sister fair, 

In fondness gazing: on soft bedded flowers 

She sleeps in angel beauty, ignorant 

Of her blest father's hour of death; while they, 

Won by her silent loveliness, delay 

To break her golden slumbers." 

Klopstock's "Messiah" was one of the books which exerted 
a most powerful influence upon the youthful imagination of 



212 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Goethe. In this connection a delightful anecdote is related 
by Prof. Boyesen in his biography of Goethe. Goethe's 
father was a staid, stern and practical German lawyer, who 
could not endure the fervid rhapsodies of Klopstock, and he 
would not permit a copy of the "Messiah" to remain in his 
home. But his wife, who was of a deeply sentimental nature, 
secretly procured a copy. Young Goethe and his little sister, 
Cornelia, sharing their mother's ardent temperament, de- 
voured the book most ravenously. They memorized practi- 
cally the whole of it, and were accustomed to amuse them- 
selves by impersonating Satan and his fiends. "Standing 
on chairs in the nursery," says Prof. Boyesen, "they would 
hurl the most delightfully polysyllabic maledictions at each 
other. One Saturday evening, while their father was re- 
ceiving a professional visit from his barber, the two children 
(who were always hushed and subdued in his presence) were 
seated behind the stove, whispering sonorous curses in each 
other's ears. Cornelia, however, carried away by the impetus 
of her inspiration, forgot her father's presence, and spoke with 
increasing violence: 

'Help me! help! I implore thee, and if thou demandst it 
Worship thee, outcast! Thou monster and black malefactor! 
Help me! I suffer the torments of death, the eternal avenger!' 
etc. 

The poor barber, frightened out of his wits by such extra- 
ordinary language, poured the soap-lather over the counsellor's 
bosom. The culprits were summoned for trial, and Klop- 
stock was placed on the index expurgatorius." 

But such a book is not to be wholly cast away. If it 
possessed no other merit, it would deserve to be embalmed in 
the affections of posterity for having helped to fire the imagi- 
nation and fashion the giant soul of Goethe. It was Klopstock 
who first showed forth the marvelous richness and fluency of 
the German language. He was, in a manner, the John-the- 



WIELAND 213 

Baptist of the Golden Age of German literature. His "Mes- 
siah" was published before Schiller was born, and when 
Goethe was an infant of two years, and he was spared to be 
a witness of their triumphs, and of those literary glories 
which at first he saw "as through a glass, darkly," but with 
which he was afterward brought face to face. 

This more practical and material age has all but placed 
the "Messiah" where Goethe's father placed it — on the index 
of things forbidden, or at least neglected. Nor is Klopstock's 
the only Messiah so cast out. But, in the endless process of 
the suns, younger Goethes will arise to track the aspirations 
of the heart or point the summits of the soul, and the Vision 
will not be lost to man. 



VII. 

WIELAND. 



One of the most illustrious authors of the German classical 
period was Christopher Martin Wieland, whose works are 
edited by Gruber in fifty-three volumes. Wieland was born 
at Oberholzheim, Wurtemberg, in 1733. Like Lessing, he was 
the son of a preacher. Born with an innate aptitude for 
versification, some of his earliest productions attracted the 
attention of Bodmer, the Swiss critic, by whom he was 
invited to Zurich. There he remained for eight years, earning 
his living as a private tutor. 

In 1769 Wieland was appointed professor of literature 
and philosophy at the University of Erfurt. Three years 
later he was summoned to Weimar, to become the tutor to 
the two sons of Princess Amalie of Saxe-Weimar, Prince 
Karl August and his brother. Endowed by nature with a 
talent for versification, he had, from the days of his youth, 
devoted all his spare moments to literature. In 1764, at the 
age of thirty-one, he had published his satire on idealism, 



214 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

"Don Silvio von Rosalva," a prose work, followed by his 
"Comic Tales," in 1766. In 1767 his "Agatha" appeared, 
presenting some studies in Fielding and other English prose 
writers. His poetic tale, "Musarion," appeared in 1768. 
Then came his "Nadine," also in verse, in 1769. In 1772, the 
year in which he proceeded to Weimar, he published his 
"Der goldene Spiegel," wherein he attempts to depict the 
ideal social state. 

Wieland was thirty-nine years of age when he reached 
Weimar, in whose constellation of immortals he was to become 
an unfading star. He soon abandoned all other pursuits, 
and gave the remainder of his life wholly to the task of litera- 
ture. He now established "The Germany Mercury," a 
monthly journal of literature, which he continued to edit for 
thirty-seven years. This publication proved more profitable, 
from the financial viewpoint, than the journals edited by^ 
Goethe, Schiller, and other great Germans of the period. 
The whole of his journalistic work is pervaded by a sort of 
mild Epicurean philosophy, somewhat Addisonian in style, 
and tending to diffuse a gentle and kindly glow of cultural 
elegance over the life and letters of the time. 

The political genius of Wieland, like that of other intellec- 
tual giants of Weimar, was cosmopolitan in character. In 
furtherance of these views he published his satirical novel, 
"Die Abdereiten," in 1774. His romantic epic, "Oberon," 
published in 1780, is now regarded as the best of his produc- 
tions. Before going to Weimar, Wieland had translated 
twenty- two of Shakespeare's plays. In the latter part of his 
life he did much toward the revival of the Greek and Roman 
classics. He translated the Satires and Epistles of Horace, 
the Letters of Cicero, and some of the works of Euripides, 
Xenophon and Aristophanes. His literary style was urbane, 
elegant, polished, and distinguished rather more for fluency 
than force. He was not, like Lessing, a precisian. He was 
more rhetorical than Lessing, but less ornate than Richter. 



j WIELAND 215 

He wrote to please rather than to convince, and in pleasing 
he was able to persuade. "If Lessing gave precision to modern 
German prose," says one, "Wieland gave it elegance and 
fluency. His work, at once graceful and fanciful, is pervaded 
by a quaint humor and delicate irony that give it a lasting 
charm." Although his translation is inferior to the later one 
of Schlegel, it was Wieland who first introduced Shakespeare 
to the German mind. A characteristic specimen of Wieland's 
prose style is the following from his essay on " Philosophy as 
the Art of Life:" 

"By far the greater part of the children of men never 
dreamed that there was such an art. People lived without 
knowing how they did it, very much as Mons. Jourdain, in 
Moliere's 'Citizen Gentleman,' had talked prose all his life, 
or as we all draw breath, digest, perform various motions, 
grow and thrive, without one in a thousand knowing or 
desiring to know by what mechanical laws or by what combi- 
nation of causes all these things are done. And in this thick 
fog of ignorance innumerable nations in Asia, Africa, America, 
and the islands of the South Sea, white and olive, yellow- 
black and pitch-black, bearded and unbearded, circumcised 
and uncircumcised, tattoed and untattoed, with and with- 
out rings through the nose, from the giants in Patagonia to the 
dwarf on Hudson's Bay, etc., etc., live to this hour. And not 
only so, but even of the greatest portion of the inhabitants 
of our elightened Europe, it may be maintained with truth, 
that they know as little about the said art of life and that 
they care as little about it as the careless people of Otaheite 
or the half-frozen inhabitants of Terra del Fuego, who are 
scarecely more than sea-calves." 

Here we have a style of writing which will be at once 
recognized by students of English literature as the style 
made famous by Mr. Addison; little or nothing of the sublime, 
devoid of all passionate vehemence, and not distinctly spark- 
ling; but in the highest degree entertaining, and productive 



216 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

of the gentler and more placid emotions, like those produced 
by the contemplation of beautiful objects. We find examples 
of the same style in Fenelon's "Telemachus," and it abounds 
amid the beauties and graces of Virgil, Cicero and Horace. 

Such is Wieland. With his discursive pleasantries, his 
ironic dignity, his Epicurean, suave and soothing self-suffi- 
ciency, his flashes of scholarship which remind us occasionally 
of Montaigne, his mild and amiable preachments, he led his 
generation a long stride on the way to a brighter view of life, 
and passed away in 1813, after a career devoted to the ad- 
vancement of learning, the upbuilding of literary art and the 
glory of German letters. 



VIII. 
HERDER. 



"Herder paid us a visit, and together with his great 
learning, he brought with him many other aids, and the later 
publications besides. Among these he announced to us the 
'Vicar of Wakefield,' an excellent work, with the German 
translation of which he wished to make us acquainted by 
reading it aloud to us himself." So says Goethe, writing of 
his student life at Strasburg. It is a fitting introduction to 
the life and character of Johann Gottfried von Herder, the 
lover of good literature, the most pronounced bibliophile of 
the German classical age, and the personal friend of Goethe, 
Schiller, Lessing, Richter and Kant. 

Herder was born at Mohrungen, in East Prussia, in 
1744. He rose to greatness over obstacles which few men 
have been able to surmount. He was the son of a poor school- 
master, and his early life was a hand-to-hand struggle with 
poverty; a contest in which he was handicapped by frail 
nerves and a weak physique. He studied at Koenigsburg 
under Kant, and would have taken the course in medicine, 



HERDER 217 

but his health would not permit. He was enabled to remain 
at the university only by accepting the charity of those who 
perceived his merit and generously aided him in his struggles. 
He finished in theology, and then began to earn a meager 
living by teaching. In 1764 he was called to the Cathedral 
School at Riga. Health and sight failed him, and he went to 
recuperate in France, returning to Germany in 1769. He 
visited Strasburg for optical treatment, and here he met 
Goethe, then a student, and five years his junior. The two 
soon became friends, and it was through Goethe's influence 
that Herder was invited, in 1775, to assume the post of Court 
Preacher to the Duke of Weimar; and thenceforth, for the 
remainder of his life, he was a conspicuous member of that 
distinguished group of poets and philosophers who inhabited 
the German Athens. . Two years before his death he received 
a patent of nobility from the Elector of Bavaria. He died in 
1803, at the age of fifty-nine, generally beloved and admired, 
and his literary comrades at Weimar erected to his memory 
a monument bearing the inscription, "Light, Love, Life." 

These three words epitomize the ideals for which he lived 
and died. His works have been published in sixty volumes, 
of which the best known are his "Poetry of the Races," "The 
Spirit of Hebrew Poetry," "Ideas on the Philosophy of the 
Human Race," and a translation of "The Cid." In his 
"Poetry of the Races" he has taken the popular songs and 
ballads of nearly all the nations of Europe and rendered them 
into classical German with peculiar grace, fidelity and charm. 

Herder is not at his best in his original poetic composi- 
tions. But in translating and interpreting the thoughts of 
others he had few equals and no superiors. In all his work in 
criticism, philosophy, philology and theology, he taught the 
unity of humankind and stressed the brotherhood of man. 
No man possessed a greater influence upon the minds of those 
with whom he came in contact, and his great literary associates 
were, in a manner, his pupils. His literary style, as well as 



218 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

his breadth of view, may be seen in the following, from his 
essay entitled "Tithon and Aurora:" 

"The timid nature of man, always compassed about with 
hope and fear, often prophesies distant evils as near, and calls 
that death which is only a wholesome slumber, a necessary, 
health-bringing relaxation. And so it generally deceives 
itself in its predictions concerning lands and kingdoms. 
Powers lie dormant which we do not perceive. Faculties 
and circumstances are developing themselves, on which we 
could not calculate. But even when our judgment is true, 
it usually leans too much on one side. 'If this is to live,' we 
say, 'that must die.' We do not consider whether it may be 
possible that both may live and act favorably on each other. 
The good Bishop Berkley, who was no poet, was inspired 
by his beneficient zeal for America to write the following: 

'Westward the star of empire takes its way; 
The four first acts already past, 

The fifth shall close the drama with the day, 
Time's noblest offspring is the last.' 

So prophesied the good-natured bishop, and if his spirit could 
now glance at yonder up-striving America, he would perhaps 
discover, with the same glance, that, in the arms of the old 
Tithon, Europe, also, a new Aurora was slumbering. Not 
four, scarcely three acts in the great drama of this still youth- 
ful quarter of the globe, are past; and who shall say how 
many times yet the old Tithon of the human race may and 
will renew his youth upon our earth!" 

A heartening and a comforting thought is this, written 
more than a century ago, for the needs of Europe in the day 
of her trial! Herder saw in death but the perpetual renewing 
of life; and he saw in life a growth which, though changing 
its forms, never ceases; a drama which changes scenes, but 
never ends. 

Df. Matthew Arnold, the greatest English critic since 
Macaulay, in his beautiful essay on "Sweetness and Light," 



HEINE 219 

had this to say of Herder and Lessing: ' 'Generations will 
pass, and literary monuments will accumulate and works far 
more perfect than the works of Lessing and Herder will be 
produced in Germany; and yet the names of these two men 
will fill a German with a reverence and enthusiasm such as 
the names of the most gifted masters will hardly awaken. 
And why? Because they humanized knowledge; because 
they broadened the basis of life and intelligence ; because they 
worked powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, to make 
reason and the will of God prevail." 



IX. 
HEINE. 



After Goethe, Heinrich Heine was, in the opinion of 
many competent judges, the most gifted lyrical artist of 
Germany. Born at Dusseldorf, in 1799, of Hebrew parents, 
young Heine was destined for commercial pursuits, but early 
in life he revolted and gave his heart to literature. He was 
graduated in the law, but made no effort to follow his pro- 
fession. 

Heine's first poems were published in 1822. Two years 
later he published another volume of verse, entitled "Book 
of Songs," which was rendered into English by Sir Walter 
Scott. In 1844 appeared "Neue Gedichte," containing some 
of his finest lyrics. Four books of his "Reisebilder," or 
"Travel-Pictures," appeared from 1826 to 1831, and gave to 
Heine, at once, his greatest fame and infamy. These sketches 
were pronounced "the most brilliant, the wittiest, the most 
entertaining, the most immoral, the coarsest, the most danger- 
ous, the most revolutionary, the most atheistic books that 
any German author had ever printed." The work was 
forbidden in Germany and other monarchial countries because 
of its revolutionary doctrines. 



220 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

In 1831 Heine took up his abode in Paris, where he died 
in 1856. A spinal malady confined him to his bed during the 
last eight years of his life, but during this period of suffering 
in what he termed his "mattress-grave" his mind remained 
undimmed and his literary activities were unabated. 

Heine's songs are among the sweetest ever written in 
any tongue, and in the world's literature he will forever 
rank among the masters of the lyric art. One of the most 
widely known of his songs is "The Lorelei," which is unsur- 
passed among the folk-songs of any people. These verses 
will illustrate its bewitching sweetness: 

I know not whence it rises 

This thought so full of woe ; 
But a tale of times departed 

Haunts me, and will not go. 

The air is cool, and it darkens, 

And calmly flows the Rhine; 
The mountain-peaks are sparkling 

In the sunny evening-shine. 

And yonder sits a maiden, 

The fairest of the fair; 
With gold is her garment gleaming 

As she combs her golden hair. 

Although Heine was pre-eminently a poet, his prose 
style was remarkable for its incisive and flashing lucidity. 
A fine specimen is this, from the "Reisebilder," where he is 
comparing himself with Don Quixote: 

"Perhaps, after all, you are right, and I am only a Don 
Quixote, and the reading of all sorts of wonderful books has 
turned my head, as it was with the Knight of La Mancha, and 
Jean Jacques Rousseau was my Amadis of Gaul, Mirabeau my 
Roland or Agramante ; and I have studied too much the heroic 
deeds of the French Paladins and the round-table of the 



HEINE 221 

National Convention. Indeed, my madness and the fixed 
ideas that I created out of books are of a quite opposite kind 
to the madness and the fixed ideas of him of La Mancha. 
He wished to establish again the expiring days of chivalry; 
I, on the contrary, wish to annihilate all that is yet remaining 
from that time, and so we work with altogether different 
views. My colleague saw windmills as giants; I, on the 
contrary, can see in our present giants only vaunting wind- 
mills. He took leather wine-skins for mighty enchanters, but 
I can see in the enchanters of to-day only leather wine- 
skins. He held beggarly pot-houses for castles, donkey- 
drivers for cavaliers, stable-wenches for court-ladies; I, on 
the contrary, hold our castles for beggarly pot-houses, our 
cavaliers for mere donkey-drivers, our court-ladies for ordinary 
stable-wenches. As he took a puppet-show for a state cere- 
mony, so I hold our state ceremonies as sorry puppet-shows, 
yet as bravely as the brave Knight of La Mancha I strike out 
at the clumsy machinery. Alas! such heroic deeds often 
turn out as badly for me as for him, and I must suffer much 
for the honor of my lady." 

Such a writer is, indeed, fated to have a deal of trouble 
with established authority. Heine was not only democratic 
in his instincts; he was vindictively and pugnaciously so. 
He was not content at striking at his opponent — he must 
sneer at him ; and blows are more readily forgiven than sneers. 
But he loved liberty, even though he sometimes confused the 
ideas of liberty and license. It was Heinrich Heine who said: 
"If all Europe were to become a prison, America would still 
present a loop-hole of escape; and God be praised! the loop- 
hole is larger than the dungeon itself." Matthew Arnold 
declared Heine to be "the most important German successor 
and continuator of Goethe in Goethe's most important line 
of activity" — that of "a soldier in the war of liberation of 
humanity." 



222 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Heine thus speaks of his early pilgrimage to the shrine of 
Goethe: "When I visited him in Weimar, and stood before 
him, I involuntarily glanced at his side to see whether the 
eagle was not there with the lightning in his beak. I was 
nearly speaking Greek to him; but as I observed that he 
understood German, I stated to him in German that the 
plums on the road between Jena and Weimar were very 
good. I had for so many long winter nights thought over 
what lofty and profound things I would say to Goethe, if I 
ever saw him— and when I saw him at last, I said to him that 
the Saxon plums were very good! And Goethe smiled." 

But Heine, with all his wit and merriment, was by no 
means devoid of spiritual thought. He was a man who loved 
and hated and suffered much, and he learned, with Browning, 
that "Knowledge by suffering entereth." From his mattress- 
grave he cried out: "Wherever a great soul gives utterance 
to its thoughts, there, also, is Golgotha!" He was a man of 
dual personality. He had his Bohemian side; but there was 
another side, which appears in many of his songs, and in such 
anecdotes as this: 

"While I was standing before the cathedral at Amiens," 
he says, "with a friend who with mingled fear and pity was 
regarding that monument — built with the strength of Titans 
and decorated with the patience of dwarfs — he turned to me 
at last and inquired, 'How does it happen that we do not 
erect such edifices in our day?' And my answer was, 'My 
dear Alphonse, the men of that day had convictions, while 
we moderns have only opinions; and something more than 
opinions is required to build a cathedral.' " 

Heine was correctly appraised by Gautier in these words : 
"Never was a nature composed of more diverse elements than 
that of Heine. He was at once credulous, tender, and cruel, 
sentimental and mocking, refined and synical, enthusiastic, 
yet cool-headed; everything except dull." 



WEBER 223 

X. 

WEBER. 

The literary movement begun in England by Keats and 
Wordsworth early in the nineteenth century and transmitted 
by them to Tennyson, had its altar fires carried to Germany 
by Friederich Wilhelm Weber. As Walter Scott was made 
a poet by reading and translating German ballads, so did 
Weber gain his first poetical inspiration from English verse. 

Weber was born December 26, 1813, at Alhausen, West- 
phalia. Like La Fontaine, the French fabulist, he was the 
son of a forest-keeper. He first studied philology at Breslau, 
where he was a classmate of Gustav Freitag, the poet and 
dramatist. He then studied medicine, and thereafter traveled 
extensively in Germany, Italy and France. He practiced 
medicine in Driburg in 1856, and was attending physician 
at a sanitarium in Lippspringe. He was elected to the Reichs- 
tag, and resided for the remainder of his life at Nieheim, 
in Westphalia, where he died April 5, 1894. 

Weber's genius flowered late in life. He was fifty-six 
years of age, and had then lived four years longer than Shake- 
speare, thirty years longer than Keats, twenty-six years 
longer than Shelly, nineteen years longer than Burns, and 
eleven years longer than Schiller had lived, before his soul 
burst forth in that divine efflorescence which thrilled, adorned 
and glorified the German Fatherland with its resplendent 
gift of song. In 1869 Weber gave to the world his translation 
of Tennyson's "Enoch Arden." Three years later he published 
his "Swedish Songs." In 1874 he returned to his first love, 
and published a translation of Tennyson's "Maude." 

Not until 1876 did he, at the age of sixty-three, put forth 
his "Dreizehnlinden," the most popular poem ever produced 
in the German language; a poem which in its popularity with 
the German masses has outrivaled even Scheffel's "Trompeter 



224 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

von Saeckingen." In 1906 the one hundredth edition of 
"Dreizehnlinden" was published by Rickelt, and the occasion 
was celebrated throughout Germany. Other editions have 
since been published. 

Weber published three volumes of lyrics, "Flowers of 
Mary," "Our Father," and ''Autumn Leaves." 

In 1892, at the age of seventy-nine, he issued his "Goliath," 
an epic of the northern races ; a poem which some critics have 
regarded as superior to the "Dreizehnlinden." His principal 
biographers are Schwering (1900) and Keiter (1903). Loe- 
wenburg, in his "Dichterabende," published in 1904, places 
him among the first German poets of modern times. 

Aside from holding his seat in the Prussian legislature, 
Weber appears to have taken little or no interest in politics, 
and when not engaged in the active practice of his profession 
he led the calm, unostentatious life of a poet of nature, as 
quiet, peaceful and uneventful as that of Wordsworth at Gras- 
mere and Rydal Mount. His simple, graceful and melodious 
numbers suggest the fascinating felicity of Keats, while his 
descriptions of nature transcend the beauties of Wordsworth. 
In canto five of the "Dreizehnlinden," for example, we catch 
the glow of evening, we hear the droning bee that has lost 
its way, we see the swallow circling home, while the Weser 
softly flows, and all nature sighs to rest in the full glory of a 
night in June. The poem is an epic song of the victorious 
fight of Christianity with SaxOn paganism a thousand years 
ago. The life of the forest primeval is there; the dark, dank 
wilderness, the bog and fen, the tinkling springs, trickling 
among the mosses that yield to the tread of Saxon warriors 
marching to the thunders of their Thor, while the smoke of 
their alter fires is wreathed among the ancient boughs. Hard 
by is the monastery of the Thirteen Linden, whence the poem 
takes its name. In the fourth canto he depicts the monks, 
each one so life-like, so real, that his presence is both seen 
and felt. And, as in the great Christian epic of Tasso, there 



WEBER 225 

is the golden thread of romance interwoven throughout the 
tale — the love~of Elmar, the heroic Lord of Goshawk Manor, 
for Hildegarde. In this, as in all of Weber's works, there is 
the powerful and everpresent Christian motif, rising like the 
tide and bearing down all before it. In him we find none of the 
mild panthesim of Wordsworth; none of the sheer hedonism 
of Goethe. Throughout all his work there resounds the 
ringing note of the Christian faith, dominant and clear, virile 
and pure, surpassing in its tenderness, overwhelming in its 
power. In this sweet and prayerful spirit does he close his 
greatest poem: 

"Helf uns Gott den weg zur Heimat 
Aus dem Erdenland zu finden; 
Betet fur den armen Schreiber 
Schliest den Sang von Dreizehnlinden." 

That so remarkable a poem has thus far escaped translation 
into English, and is almost wholly unknown to English readers, 
is to be attributed only to an oversight on the part of those 
who are capable of performing a work of such value to modern 
culture. At the author's request, Rev. John Rothensteiner 
of St. Louis, Missouri, a gifted author of religious songs, has 
rendered into English the following verses from Weber's 
"Herbst-Blaetter" — Autumn Leaves — which afford an excel- 
lent example of Weber's soulful piety and the placid sweet- 
ness of his lyric style : 

Was Life a Dream? 

Past eighty winters, here my journey ends; 
Rest, pilgrim-staff, and let us vigil keep 
For Charon's boat across the mystic deep 
Whilst dreamlike o'er the past my spirit bends, 
Recalling life's long pain and brief delight 
Like yonder sunset-clouds all golden bright. 



226 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Was life a dream? — A dewy springtide morn, 
Mysterious gloom of wild-wood beech and oak, 
The forest-ranger's lodge, the quick, sharp stroke 
Of woodman's ax, the post-boy's far off horn, 
The finches' happy song, the stockdove's call, 
And church bells chiming with the water-fall. 

Then bench and table in a whitewashed hall, 
A crowd of boys with faces rosy-bright, 
Poring o'er book and script; one man of might. 
Yet kind and mild, the guide and friend of all. 
Homer and Plato in the niches low, 
And laughing Horace and great Cicero. 

A student corps with face-disfigurements, 
On each proud breast the vari-colored band ; 
With wit and wisdom and with blade in hand 
Still rich in want and folly and good sense ; 
Keeping in song and wine the golden mean, 
With thoughts as high as eagles and as keen. 

A quaint old city in my native land, 
And endless battling then with drouth and death, 
To heal each pain, and ease the fevered breath, 
By grace of God, with skill and gentle hand. 
Long sleepless nights, and weary days and faint; 
Now grateful thanks, now much ungracious plaint. 

And many a bracing ride through winter snows, 
And walks along the spring-tide's pageantry; 
But constant care and sorrow walked with me, 
And oft a prayer, a cry for help arose. 
But half my prayer was lost, and yet was made 
Complete by those that cared for me and prayed. 



WEBER 227 

And many a night beneath the starry throng 
Returning from my day's work and the heat, 
Came rhyme on rhyme, as measured by the beat 
With which my palfrey's motion led my song. 
All gone, forgotten, what was born of night, 
Lost as it came in Time's eventful flight. 

But now meseems, I'm dreaming evermore; 

How long, how long! — A kingdom God made known 

Beyond the sea of time, with great white throne; 

Afar it seems to raise its glittering shore; 

The darksome boatman stands and beckons me— 

God grant my soul the blest eternity. 



PART SEVEN 

GREAT BRITISH AUTHORS 



I. Shakespeare. 

II. Spenser. 

III. Milton. 

IV. Addison. 
V. Pope. 

VI. Byron. 

VII. Scott. 

VIII. Wordsworth. 

IX. Dickens. 

X. Tennyson. 



(229) 



The English language has a veritable power of expression 
such as, perhaps, never stood at the command of any other lan- 
guage of men. Its highly spiritual genius and wonderfully happy 
development and condition have been the result of a surprisingly 
intimate union of the two noblest languages in Modern Europe, 
the Teutonic and the Romaic. It is well known in what relation 
these two stand to one another in the English tongue ; the former 
supplying, in far larger proportion, the material ground work; 
the latter, the spiritual conceptions. In truth a language, which 
by no mere accident has produced and upborne the greatest and 
most predominant poet of modern times, as distinguished from 
the ancient classical poetry (I can, of course, only mean Shake- 
speare), may, with all right, be called a world-language, and, like 
the English people, appears destined -hereafter to prevail, with a 
sway more extensive even than its present, over all the portions of 
the globe. For in wealth, good sense, and closeness of structure, 
no other of the languages at this day spoken deserves to be com- 
pared with it — not even our German, which is torn, even as we are 
torn, and must first rid itself of many defects before it can enter 
boldly into the lists as a competitor with the English. 

— Jacob Grimm. 



(230) 



SHAKESPEARE 231 

I. 

SHAKESPEARE. 

William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon in 
1564, and died there in 1616, at the age of fifty-two. The 
biographical data we possess concerning him are too meager, 
unsatisfactory and unimportant to cast a ray of light upon 
his character. We are compelled to judge him by his work. 
But such judgments are not always true. Shakespeare, 
like Lope de Vega, wrote to please the multitude rather than 
to instruct it. He was wholly of the stage. It was for him 
both home and workshop. All we certainly know of him 
lends force to the conviction that the theatre was the law 
of his love and life. His intellect was nurtured in this dramatic 
diathesis. One should be chary of seeking too much self- 
revelation in the plays of such an author. Books have been 
written about ''Shakespeare as a Lawyer,' etc., etc., from 
information vouchsafed in his plays. It seems that all such 
works are violative of the cardinal principles of literary criti- 
cism. Shakespeare was not writing lawbooks, nor works 
upon theology, medicine or logic. In passing judgment upon 
a literary work we must consider the author's intent. We 
have no right to consider a tragedy as a work on criminal 
jurisprudence. Shakespeare was primarily a playwright. 

Because of the slender knowledge extant concerning his 
personality, the authorship and even the existence of Shake- 
speare have been questioned in recent years. Some have 
thought it impossible that an unlearned actor, such as Shake- 
speare certain' y was, could have written the plays and poems 
ascribed to him But a minute study of the Shakespearean 
works will quickly dispel the illusion that these works bear 
intrinsic evidence of scholarship. Others have thought that 
so great a man must have made a greater stir than did Shake- 
speare ; that he should have been at least as well known as Sir 
Francis Bacon. The soundness of that view is by no means 



232 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

apparent. Great men are not seldom ignored by those 
immediately surrounding them. Shakespeare's occupation 
was not respected in his day. Moreover, in actual scholar- 
ship, he was greatly inferior to Ben Jonson, Marlowe and 
other dramatists of the time. He was a skilled adapter and 
compiler of the work of other men, which he often passed as 
his own, a faculty not likely to win the highest encomiums 
from his own associates. 

As a writer of comedy Shakespeare will hardly be accepted 
as the superior of Moliere, whose mode of life much resembled 
that of the English bard ; in fertility of invention he was vastly 
inferior to Lope de Vega, whom he resembles in temporal 
success ; and in sheer depth and force of intellect, in breadth of 
scholarship and ripeness of culture, he is not to be compared 
with Goethe. As a writer of tragic poetry only, he lacked 
the pristine fire of the Greek masters and the classical cor- 
rectness of the French. Where, then, is his superiority? 
His excellence is due almost wholly to his intuitive knowledge 
of the human emotions. Here his wisdom is truly prodigious, 
and he rises to almost supernatural stature. He was the 
most sensitive and the keenest of all observers. He was 
omniscient in his perceptivity, ubiquitous in his perspicacity, 
overmastering in the abysmal reach of his passion-voicing 
power. What he saw he felt, and what he felt his consummate 
artistry translated to the minds of men. He could truly say 
with his own Othello: "This is the only witchcraft I have 
used." He viewed, with an infinite sagacity, and with a 
single all-sweeping glance, the perimeter of human conduct. 
Seldom indeed has it been given to the eye of mortal man to 
see the inmost secrets of hearts as Shakespeare saw them; to 
read them as they were read by his all-seeing and unerring eye ; 
or to voice the tumults of the soul as he has uttered them, 
linked with the eternal harmonies and rapt in the rhythm of a 
deathless truth. Here, then, is the secret of his mastery, 
his mystery and his power. In the face of self-evident genius 



SHAKESPEARE 233 

of the most exalted type, critics fain would search for scholar- 
ship. They would see Shakespeare's diploma! Not only 
would Bacon's scholarship have been without value in pro- 
ducing the Shakespearean creations ; it would have made them 
impossible. As Hudson says, in his introduction to King Lear 
(taking the thought from Dryden), "Had he been more ad- 
dicted to looking at Nature through 'the spectacles of books,' 
or through other men's eyes, he would probably have seen 
less of her inward meaning, and been less happy and less 
idiomatic in his translation of it." However pleasing to 
pedantic vanity may be the theory that the great dramatic 
poet was versed in the lore of books, the plays themselves 
afford conclusive evidence to the contrary. Had Shakespeare 
been learned in the historical and classical literature familiar 
to the cultured minds of his generation, he cou d not have 
displayed so much ignorance regarding the lives and times 
described in many of his plays. 

Enough has been presented by modern scholarship to 
show that, in at least the most accessible of the fields of learn- 
ing at that time (history and biography), Shakespeare can- 
not be reproached with scholarship. Who does not envy 
Scott's old cavalier knight in Woodstock, with his "Will 
Shakespeare says" forever on his tongue? We know that old 
Sir Henry had no commentaries in his edition; that the bard 
he knew was the old magician himself, Shakespeare unan- 
notated and unadorned, magnificent in his mystery, adorable 
in his beauty, inexplicable and unexplained. But, so patiently 
and passionately have his devotees pursued him, in their 
anxiety to trace those mystic veins of virgin gold to the 
mother-lode, that they have but too well succeeded. 

Historical research has now fairly established the fact that 
not a single one of the plays, nor a single one of the great poems 
attributed to him, is in plot, thought and verbiage wholly 
original with him. No finished work that bears his glorious 
name is original in its entirety. In some instances he has 



234 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

paraphrased, and in other places he has deliberately taken 
the words of other writers, placed them in the mouths of his 
own characters, and thus used them as his own. But his 
characters, once he has touched them, become peculiarly and 
distinctly his own. The whole history of art discloses no 
creation bearing more clearly the mark and stamp of exclusive 
individuality. The play may be a time-worn theme or 
another's plot, but the characters are Shakespeare's very own. 
In his essay on Quotations and Originality, Emerson observes: 
"When Shakespeare is charged with debts to authors, Landor 
replies, 'yet. he was more original than his originals. He 
breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life.' ' 
So he did. Shylock and Hamlet were well-known characters 
in the older drama before Shakespeare heard of them. But 
not until he touched them with the wand of his mystic power 
did they become instinct with life. 

Among all the women of the stage, where shall we find 
such another group of feminine intellects as Portia, Isabella, 
Beatrice and Rosalind? Or such beautiful creatures of passion 
as Juliet, Helena, Perdita, Viola, Ophelia and Miranda? 
Where such characters of the affections as Hermione, Des- 
demona, Imogen and Cordelia? One may almost hear the 
rustle of their garments as they pass. 

Sir John Falstaff, of protuberant abdomen, swaggering, 
ungracious gait and braggart speech, drinking and swearing 
and lying, hearty and jolly withal, grunting with comfort and 
reeking with ale, still treads the boards alone and greets us 
with his loud guffaw. And there are Slender and Justice 
Shallow, and the inimitable Dogberry, as Ulrici called him 
"the clown par excellence," who insisted upon being written 
down an ass — in officialdom the climax of absurdity, but none 
the less true to type as the ebullience of legalism and the 
efflorescence of village politics. Who can forget Jacques, 
"the melancholy Jacques," who could "suck melancholy out 
of a song as a weasel sucks eggs?" Or Touchstone, of whom 



SHAKESPEARE 235 

Hudson said "he is the most entertaining of Shakespeare's 
privileged characters?" There, too, is the asinine Bottom, 
still rehearsing "most obscenely and courageously." The 
fairies "fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes," and he 
calls for "a bottle of hay." So do the airy spirits mingle with 
the clownishness of this world. Fairies! Queen Mab, "no 
bigger than an agate-stone on the forefinger of an alderman;" 
Puck, and Ariel, Titania and her dewy train! Were there 
ever such fairies as we find in Shakespeare? Of all the 
dramatists, he alone seems to possess the gift of the occult, 
the mastery of the supernatural. This fact was noted by 
Joseph Addison, who said: "There is something so wild and 
yet so solemn in the speeches of his ghosts, fairies, witches and 
the like imaginary persons, that we cannot forbear thinking 
them natural, though we have no rule by which to judge them, 
and must confess if there are such beings in the world it looks 
highly probable that they should talk and act as he has repre- 
sented them." 

Of the historic and tragic characters we need say nothing 
now. The reader who has not wept with Othello, shuddered 
at Macbeth or been moved by the tragic spirit of Hamlet, is 
impervious to human feeling and devoid of human passion. 
Indeed, we may say with Macaulay: "The characters of 
which he has given us an impression as vivid as that which 
we receive from the characters of our own associates, are to be 
reckoned by the score." In this respect he leaves all other 
dramatists far behind. "Compare him with Homer, the 
tragedians of Greece, the poets of Italy, Plautus, Cervantes, 
Moliere, Addison, LeSage, Fielding, Richardson, Scott, the 
romancers of the elder or later schools," says Henry Hallam — 
"one man has far more than surpassed them all. Others may 
have been as sublime, others may have been more pathetic, 
others may have equalled him in grace and purity of language, 
and have shunned some of his faults; but the philosophy of 
Shakespeare, his intimate searching out of the human heart 



236 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

whether in the gnomic form of sentence, or in the dramatic 
exhibition of character, is a gift peculiarly his own." 

Coleridge, in his Biographia Literaria, calls him ''Our 
myriad-minded Shakespeare." Thomas Carlyle, in his essay 
on "Characteristics of Shakespeare," says: "If I say that 
Shakespeare is the greatest of intellects, I have said all con- 
cerning him." But he was not the greatest of intellects. 
He was not the greatest of poets. But, as a painter of human 
character, his work has not been equalled in any nation or in 
any age. Shakespeare, as none before or since have done, 
could read the message of the soul and speak the language of 
the heart. 

"Great he may be justly called," Professor Blair observed 
in his lecture on English tragedy, "as the extent and force of 
his natural genius, both for tragedy and comedy, are altogether 
unrivaled. But, at the same time, it is a genius shooting 
wild; deficient in just taste, and altogether unassisted by 
knowledge or art. Long has he been idolized by the British 
nation; much has been said, and much has been written con- 
cerning him; criticism has been drawn to the very dregs, in 
commentaries upon his words and witticisms; and yet it 
remains, to this day, in doubt, whether his beauties or his 
faults be greatest. * * * * All these faults, however, Shakes- 
peare redeems, by two of the greatest excellencies which any 
tragic poet can possess; his lively and diversified paintings 
of character; his strong and natural expressions of passion. 
These are his two chief virtues; on these his merit rests." 

So vast, indeed, is the diversity of his portraiture of 
human passion that the human soul knows no attitude in 
which the great painter has not limned it forth in all its lights 
and shades, in all its beauty and its truth, and placed it in 
the endless gallery of his art, for the wonder and admiration of 
the ages. "Amid so many portraitures," as Taine has re- 
marked, we must, perforce, "choose two or three to indicate 
the depth and nature of them all;" for "the critic is lost in 



SPENSER 237 

Shakespeare as in an immense town; he will describe a couple 
of monuments, and entreat the reader to imagine the city." 

"If you were asked to point out the special features in 
which Shakespeare's plays are so transcendently excellent," 
says Prof. J. A. Froude, "you would mention, perhaps, among 
others, this — that his stories are not put together, and his 
characters are not conceived, to illustrate any particular law 
or principle. They teach many lessons, but not any one 
prominent above another ; and when we have drawn from them 
all the direct instruction which they contain, there remains 
still something unresolved — something which the artist gives, 
and which the philosopher cannot give. 

"It is in this characteristic that we -are accustomed to 
say Shakespeare's supreme truth lies. He represents real 
life. His drama teaches as life teaches — neither less nor more. 
He builds his fabrics, as nature does, on right and wrong; 
but he does not struggle to make nature more systematic 
than she is. In the subtle interflow of good and evil; in the 
unmerited sufferings of innocence; in the disproportion of 
penalties to desert; in the seeming blindness with which 
justice, in attempting to assert itself, overwhelms innocent 
and guilty in a common ruin — Shakespeare is true to real 
experience. The mystery of life he leaves as he finds it; 
and, in his most t emendous positions, he is addressing rather 
the intellectual emotions than the understanding — knowing 
well that the understanding in such things is at fault, and the 
sage as ignorant as the child." 



II. 

SPENSER. 

Born in 1552, Edmund Spenser was nine years older than 
Bacon, and twelve years older than Shakespeare. He was a 
native of London, and took his master's degree at Cambridge 
in 1576. Three years later he published his "Shepherd's 



238 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Calendar," which Dryden proclaimed to be without an equal 
in any language, further declaring that it placed Spenser in 
the class of Virgil and Theocritus. This pastoral, in twelve 
books, was the first really forceful and sustained effort in 
English poetry since the days of Chaucer, and was immediately 
recognized as the work of a master, although it betrays, the 
diffuseness, prolixity, pedantic phraseology and tendency to 
grotesque exaggeration which too often mar Spenser's style, 
and it by no means justifies the extravagant encomium of 
Dryden. However, it won warm praise from Sir Philip 
Sidney and a meager patronage from the powerful and popular 
Earl of Leicester, one of the favorites of Queen Elizabeth. 

At about this time the poet was appointed secretary to 
Lord Grey, but recently created Lord Deputy of Ireland. 
With his new chieftain he at once entered upon the turbulent 
duties of the British service in that unhappy island — a work 
which was to occupy the remainder of his life. Spenser and 
Sir Walter Raleigh were both with Lord Grey at the tragedy 
of Smerwick, where six hundred of the Irish, after having 
peacefully and voluntarily surrendered their arms, were 
cruelly massacred by order of the English general. Raleigh, 
it is said, was captain of one of the bands of executioners. It 
is not believed that the poet took any part in this or other 
armed engagements, but it is certain that he was at all times 
an eloquent defender of Lord Grey's merciless and remorseless 
regime. 

With but occasional visits to England, Spenser remained 
in Ireland from the time of Desmond's rebelUon in 1580 until 
the outbreak of Tyrone's rebellion in 1599. Many of the 
events of those terrible years, when the English attempted 
to exterminate the entire population of Munster, are calmly 
reported by Spenser in his document entitled "View of the 
Present State of Ireland." Spenser went to Ireland for no 
romantic purpose; but, as Dean Church in his biography 
observes: "He came to make his fortune as well as he could, 



SPENSER 239 

and he accepted the conditions of place and scene, and entered 
at once into the game of adventure and gain which was the 
natural one for all English comers, and of which the prizes 
were lucrative offices and forfeited manors and abbeys. And 
in the native population and native interests, he saw nothing 
but what called forth not merely antipathy but deep moral 
condemnation. It was not merely that the Irish were 
ignorant, thriftless, filthy, debased and loathsome in their 
pitiable misery and despair; it was that in his view, justice, 
truth, honesty, had utterly perished among them, and there- 
fore were not due to them. Of any other side of the picture 
he, like other good Englishmen, was entirely unconscious; 
he saw only on all sides of him the empire of barbarism and 
misrule which valiant and godly Englishmen were fighting to 
vanquish and destroy — fighting against apparent but not real 
odds. And all this was aggravated by the stiff adherence 
of the Irish to their old religion." 

Such was the harsh and gloomy setting in which Spenser 
took up the work of writing that splendid allegory "The Faerie 
Queen," a poem distinguished for its elevated religious tone, its 
dreamy enchantment, its softness of coloring, delicacy of fancy 
and the melodious beauty and harmony of its numbers. It is 
one of the longest poems in the English language. It is more 
than twice as long as Milton's great epic, or Tennyson's 
Idylls of the King. But few of the greater English poems 
display such a lavish profusion and richness of imagery, a 
musical cadence so exquisite, stately and unfailing, or a 
versatility so facinating and exhaustless. Little wonder that 
Spenser has been a favorite with so many of our greater poets. 
He was admired by Shakespeare. Hallam thinks him superior 
to Ariosto. Cowley says that he was made a poet by reading- 
Spenser. Dryden says: "Milton has acknowledged to me 
that Spenser was his original." Pope found the Faerie 
Queen an unfailing joy in both youth and age. Matthew 
Arnold said: "His verse is more fluid, slips more easily and 



240 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

quickly along, than the verse of almost any other English 
poet." Campbell calls him, because of the luxurious har- 
mony of his colorings, the "Rubens of English poetry." No 
poet, indeed, has made a more profound impression upon the 
poets who have followed him. A pronounced defect of the 
piece, however, is the cringing, sycophantic and odious truck- 
ling to arbitrary power by means of an utterly shameless and 
nauseating flattery of the vain, capricious and ill-tempered 
Queen of England. As Gloriana, Elizabeth is made empress 
of all true nobility ; as Belphoebe she is represented as the 
princess of all sweetness and beauty; as Britomart the armed 
votaress of all purity, and as Mercilla, the lady of all com- 
passion and grace! 

The reader may catch the languorous charm of his verse 
from the following excerpt, describing the dwelling of Mor- 
pheus : 

And more to lull him in his slumber soft, y 

A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down, 

An ever-drizzling rain upon the loft, 

Mix't with a murmuring wind much like the sowne 

Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swoon. 

No other noise, nor people's troublous cries, 

As still are wont t' annoy the walled town, 

Might there be heard ; but careless Quiet lies 

Wrapt in eternal silence far from enemies. 

In 1595, in celebration of his marriage, Spenser produced 
his Epithalamion, one of the greatest of English lyrics, and 
probably the finest composition of its kind in any language. 
But, in less than four years, the Irish stormed his castle of 
Kilcolman, and the poet and his young wife barely escaped 
with their lives, leaving their babe to perish in the flames. 
Spenser reached England in a state of despair, and died soon 
thereafter, having published but half of the "Faerie Queen." 
The remaining six books, if they were ever completed, perished 
with the poet's child in Kilcolman castle. Thus died the 



MILTON 241 

first of the great Elizabethan poets. Critics like Macaulay 
may complain of his tedium — a defect common to most 
allegorical tales — but none will deny that Spenser was the 
first to show forth the spacious beauties of English speech. 
He is buried in Westminster Abbey, near the tomb of Chaucer. 
His limpid, liquid note is thus intoned by Keats: 

"A silver trumpet Spenser blows, 

And, as its martial notes to silence flee, 

From a virgin chorus flows 

A hymn in praise of spotless Chastity. 

Tis still! Wild warblings from th' Eolian lyre 

Enchantment softly breathe, and tremblingly 
expire." 



III. 

MILTON. 



His soul was like a star and dwelt apart. 

— Wordsworth . 

John Milton, the most learned man among all the poets 
of England, was born December 9, 1608, eight years before the 
death of Shakespeare. He was a native of London, received 
his early education at St. Paul's school near his home, and at 
sixteen entered Christ's College at Cambridge, where, during 
a seven years' course, he took both his bachelor's and master's 
degrees. Meanwhile, his father, a scrivener, had acquired 
a competence and retired to a country seat at Horton, whither 
his gifted son followed. 

At Horton, Milton pursued an elaborate course of self- 
culture, whereby he designed to perfect himself in the literature 
of Greece and Rome, as well as in the modern languages. 
He acquired a complete mastery not only of Greek and Latin, 
but of Hebrew, Syriac, Italian, French, Dutch and other 



242 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

European languages. During his six years at Horton he 
composed L'Allegro, II Penseroso, Comus and Lycidas, and 
emerged from his retirement as one of the first lyric poets of 
the age. Indeed, his L'Allegro and II Penseroso have never 
been surpassed in English verse. 

He now departed for Italy, where he was to spend fifteen 
months. At Paris he met the great Dutch writer, Hugo 
Grotius. He interviewed Galileo at Florence. At Naples 
he visited the Marquis of Villa, then in his old age, who had 
in his youth befriended Tasso. At every point he visited the 
great libraries, met the literati, and studied assiduously to 
perfect himself in literature. To distinguish himself as the 
author of a great poem had been the dream of his life, and it 
was an ideal which, throughout his busy and varied career, 
he never for one moment relinquished. In 1639 he returned 
to England and opened a school for boys in London. 

At the age of thirty-five he contracted a marriage which 
proved unhappy. Four years after the death of his first wife 
he married again. His second wife died in fifteen months. 
In 1663 he contracted a third marriage. He was, in modern 
times, the first great advocate of divorce, and his utterances 
upon womankind in general do not mark him as one who 
would, in any circumstances, find the domestic relation partic- 
ularly happy. 

In 1649 he was made Latin secretary to Cromwell. Over- 
work in this office was the immediate cause of his blindness. 
At the age of forty-three his eye-sight was wholly gone. How- 
ever, he continued in his office until 1658. With the Restor- 
ation in 1660 Milton, blind and poor, became a fugitive, but 
he was afterwards included in the general amnesty. Now, at 
the age of fifty- two, he seriously set to work upon the poem 
which had been the ambition of his life, and which he had 
meditated upon various occasions for a quarter of a century. 
During the preceding twenty years he had published some 
twenty-five tracts, and had achieved fame as a master of 



MILTON 243 

polemical warfare, although much of his prose is mere epideictic 
display. But in all these wordy digladiations is the battle- 
trump of an orotund style, resonant, strong and clear, bear- 
ing down all obstacles in the roll and sweep of its majestic 
power. "It is to be regretted," says Macaulay, "that the 
prose writings of Milton should, in our time, be so little read. 
As compositions they deserve the attention of every man who 
wishes to become acquainted with the full power of the English 
language. They abound with passages compared with which 
the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. 
They are a perfect Field of Cloth of Gold. The style is stiff 

with gorgeous embroidery It is to borrow his own 

majestic language, 'a seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and 
harping symphonies.' ' Mark Pattison, too, in his biography 
of Milton, is similarly impressed with the magnificence of 
Milton's prose. Says he: "They are monuments of our 
language so remarkable that Milton's prose works must 
always be resorted to by students as long as English remains 
a medium of ideas." As James Russell Lowell said, "It was 
an organ that Milton mastered, mighty in compass, capable 
equally of the tempest's ardors or the slim delicacy of the 
flute ; and sometimes it bursts forth in great crashes through 
his prose, as if he touched it for solace in the intervals of his 
toil." 

We know more of the details of Milton's life than of any 
author of his time. His biography in six octavo volumes by 
David Masson is one of the most exhaustive works of its kind 
in the English language. It may, however, be epitomized 
as a life of hard work, political controversy, and superhuman 
diligence in the pursuit of learning. Liberty was the con- 
suming and obsessing passion of his life, and to its hallowed 
service he gave his best years in controversy with royalty 
upon the one hand and Puritanism on the other. Like Lessing 
in Germany, he struggled unceasingly for the freedom of the 
press, and his "Areopagitica" will forever remain among the 



244 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

conspicuous monuments erected to the freedom of speech. 
Of freedom he said: 

"None can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest 
love not freedom, but license, which never hath more scope 
or more indulgence than under tryants. Hence it is tyrants 
are not oft offended by, nor stand much in doubt of bad men, 
as being all naturally servile; but in whom virtue and true 
worth is most eminent, them they fear in earnest, as by right 
their masters; against them lies all their hatred and cor- 
ruption." 

. But not until his public career was ended, his period of 
storm and stress was over and his life's work was nearly done, 
did Milton find leisure for his greatest work. Then it was, 
when ambition's hopes were withered and most earthly ties 
were severed; then, when in blindness and poverty his sun 
was sinking among the clouds, did the farewell beams of his 
mighty genius burst upon the world in a flood of eternal light. 
When the raucous voice of controversy became inaudible to 
his ear the celestial voices entered and the noise of the rabble 
gave way to the harmonies of the infinite. When the carnal 
beauties of the world faded away before his sightless eyes, 
"the celestial light shone inward," and he visualized the 
gleaming armaments of Heaven in their glorious pageantry 
of golden light. Then did his mighty harp vibrate to the 
unseen touch, and the Spirit vouchsafed answer to his prayer: 

" what in me is dark 

Illumine, what is low raise and support; 
That to the height of this great argument 
I may assert Eternal Providence, 
And justify the ways of God to men." 

The Paradise Lost was finished in 1665, and was published 
two years later. For grandeur and sublimity it is unequalled 
in the English language, and its elevated style is matched in 
modern times by none but Dante. The thunder-roll of his 
noble periods finds no echo in the English tongue. "The 



MILTON 245 

Paradise Lost is looked upon, by the best judges, as the 
greatest production, or at least the noblest work of genius, 
in our language," says Joseph Addison. Samuel Johnson 
says: "Before the greatness displayed in Milton's poem, 
all other greatness shrinks away." Hume declared him to be 
"the most wonderfully sublime of any poet in any language — 
Homer, Lucretius and Tasso not excepted." Certainly the 
history of literature affords no other example of a work so 
stupendous in its magnificence, brought to completion under 
conditions less conducive to perfection in literary work. 

"His blindness seems to have been complete before 1654," 
writes Hallam in his Literature of Europe; "and I scarcely 
think that he had begun his poem before the anxiety and 
trouble into which the public strife of the commonwealth 
and the Restoration had thrown him gave leisure for im- 
mortal occupations. Then the remembrance of early read- 
ing came over his dark and lonely path like the moon emerg- 
ing from the clouds. Then it was that the muse was truly 
his; not only as she poured her creative inspiration into his 
mind, but as the daughter of Memory, coming with frag- 
ments of ancient melodies the voice of Euripides, and Homer 
and Tasso; sounds that he had loved in youth, and treasured 
up for the solace of his age. They who, though not enduring 
the calamity of Milton, hava known what it is, when afar from 
books, in solitude or in traveling or in the intervals of worldly 
care, to feed on poetical recollections, to murmur over the beau- 
tiful line 3 whose cadence had long delighted their ear, to recall 
the sentiments and images which retain by association the 
cha m that early years once gave them — they will feel the 
inestimable value of committing to the memory, in the prime 
of its power, what it will easily receive and indelibly retain." 

But Milton's memory, marvelous as it was, did not alone 
suffice. H i was obliged to call upon his daughters, and when 
they, perchance, rebelled, upon his friends, to read to him the 
countless works whose beauty and whose truth he was to 



246 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

transfuse, in the alembic of his genius, into the priceless gems 
of his poesy. Some writers have intimated that Milton 
owed his Paradise Lost to Grotius, to Vondel, or to Andreini. 
The drama of the fall of man was presented by Hugh Grotius 
in "Adamus Exsul." The same theme was exploited by 
another great Dutchman, Joost Van den Vondel, in his 
"Lucifer" and his "Adam Ballingschap " Andreini attempted 
an Italian play, or sacra rappresentazione, in manner and 
form resembling the Spanish auto. But none of these pro- 
ductions could have been of great service to Milton, although 
he was familiar with them all. He is nearer to Vondel only 
because both took Sophocles and Euripides for their models. 
In 1671 "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes" 
were published. "Nothing," says Goethe, "has ever been 
done so entirely in the sense of the Greeks as Samson Agonis- 
tes." In 1674 Milton died, as one has said, "old and blind 
and fallen on evil days," yet "with his Titanic proportions 
and independent loneliness, the most impressive figure in 
English literature." Let us quote, in conclusion, from the 
beautiful tribute of Gray: 

"He passed the flaming bounds of place and time — 
The living throne, the sapphire-blaze, 
Where angels tremble, while they gaze, 
He saw; but, blasted with excess of light, 
Closed his eyes in endless night." 

"Milton," said Lord Lytton, "is indeed an august 
example of the aspiration to self-completion, not only as to 
scope and strength, but as to ornament and grace. In the 
tastes and characteristics of his youth, this severe republican 
who has come down to the vulgar gaze in colors so stern 
though so sublime, rather presents to us the idealized image 
of the Elizabethan cavalier. Philip Sydney himself was not 
more the type of the all-accomplished and consummate 
gentleman. Beautiful in person — courtly in address — skilled 



ADDISON 247 

in the gallant exercise of arms — a master of each manlier as 
of each softer art — versed in music — in song — in the languages 
of Europe — the admired gallant of the dames and nobles of 
Italy — the cynosure of all eyes that 'rained influence and 
adjudged' — he, the destined Dante of England, was rather 
in his youth the brilliant personification of the mythical 
Crichton." 



IV. 
ADDISON. 



Joseph Addison, born May 1, 1672, the son of an English 
clergyman, entered Oxford at the age of fifteen, and soon 
became noted for his proficiency in Latin verse. On leaving 
Oxford in 1699, he was, through the instrumentality of Lord 
Halifax, granted a pension of about $1,500.00 per annum, 
and soon set forth upon a continental tour in order to perfect 
himself in the modern languages, and augment his quali- 
fications for the diplomatic service. 

At Paris he met Boileau and Malebranche. He traveled 
over France, Italy, Switzerland and parts of Germany and 
returned to England after an absence of nearly four years, 
only to find his pension discontinued and his friends bereft 
of power. For his living he was forced to rely upon his pen. 
At this low stage of his fortunes there happily intervened the 
battle of Blenheim. "It was a famous victory," as old Kasper 
said, but at the time there was apparently a woeful lack of 
British poets to properly record its fame. It was Addison's 
opportunity. At this juncture he was approached by an 
emissary of the government with the request that he indite 
a few lines in praise of the great Duke of Marlborough and 
his "famous victory." Addison responded with "The Cam- 
paign," a poem which was at once immensely popular, but 
which has been preserved from oblivion by its one beautiful 



248 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

and powerful simile, wherein he likens Marlborough, in the 
heat of battle, to the angel of the tempest, which 

"Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." 

Addison was now safely and irrevocably launched upon 
a political career. His political faction not orly lauded him 
as the greatest of living poets, but showered him with official 
preferments as well. In his short but brilliant life — for he 
died at forty-seven — he held the office of Under-Secretary 
of State, Secretary of State, was twice Secretary of Ireland, 
and for many years sat as a member of Parliament. His 
popularity did not wax and wane with the fortunes of his 
political party, but continued to the end of his life. And the 
reason is not far to seek. 

It is difficult to imagine a more equable temperament than 
that of Joseph Addison. Whether we find him immersed in 
problems of international politics, winning or losing political 
campaigns, writing tragedies or Latin verses, whiling away 
an evening with friends over a social bottle at Button's or 
busying himself with plans for the "Spectator," he was ever 
the serene and gentle spirit that still gleams in the pages of 
his essays. Neither the envenomed jealousy of Pope nor 
the petulance of Steele, neither the taunts of political parti- 
sans nor the envious shafts of literary rivals could provoke 
his wrath or mar the classic dignity of his unruffled poise. 
It is difficult, indeed, to dissociate the personality of Addison 
from his essays. He could truly have said, with Montaigne, 
"I am my essays." 

It is as an essayist only that we must consider him. With- 
out the charming pages of the Spectator, the Freeholder, the 
Guardian and the Tatler, posterity would hardly concern 
itself about his other works, notwithstanding Boileau's praise 
of some of his verses, and notwithstanding Voltaire's opinion 
that Addison's "Cato" ranks above the tragedies of Shake- 
speare. 



ADDISON 249 

Addison made morality fashionable. That was his great 
achievement. In the words of Taine, "For the first time, 
Addison reconciled virtue with elegance, taught duty in an 
accomplished style, and made pleasure subservient to reason." 
The style of the essays, for the purposes intended, is inimitable. 
It is wanting in that fire and spirit which the French call 
"verve." It does not possess the rugged strength which dis- 
tinguishes Lessing among the Germans. It is not so polemi- 
cal as that of either Milton or Macaulay. Yet in his chosen 
field and upon his own ground, there are few prose writers, 
in any language, who may be regarded as superior to Joseph 
Addison. 

Addison intrigues the reader by his ingratiating courtesy, 
his polite deference, his broad humanity, his uniform civility. 
He can, upon occasion, be archly politic. His piquant grace, 
his tactful, gliding elegance, his moderation and calmness, 
are resources which never fail; while, over all his harmonious 
phrasing, his balanced sentences, and the purling suavity 
of his rounded periods, there are suffused the rosy lights of a 
modest gayety, a sweet reasonableness, an urbane sanity, 
which weave a captivating spell. In this fashion did Addison 
lead his generation to higher literary levels than it had known 
before, while divorcing literature from vice. Every reader 
is familiar with Samuel Johnson's famous pronouncement, in 
his Lives of the Poets: "Whoever wishes to attain an English 
style, familiar, but not course, and elegant, but not ostenta- 
tious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addi- 
son." Macaulay declared that "His best essays approach 
near to absolute perfection, nor is their excellence more won- 
derful than their variety As a moral satirist he 

stands unrivalled. If ever the best Tatlers and Spectators were 
equalled in their own kind, we should be inclined to guess 
that it must have been by the lost comedies of Menander. 
If we wish to find anything more vivid than Addison's best 
portraits, we must go either to Shakespeare or to Cervantes." 



250 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

Two of Addison's shorter poems are of unusual quality. 
Both are profoundly religious in sentiment. The first is an 
ode of gratitude for his safe return from his continental tour. 
We shall quote but a single stanza : 

"How are thy servants blest, O Lord! 

How sure is their defense! 
Eternal wisdom is their guide, 

Their help Omnipotence." 

The poet Robert Burns said, in a letter to Dr. Moore, that 
this was the first poem he ever knew, and he describes its 
powerful effect upon his childish fancy. The other famous 
ode of Addison's is the well-known hymn, beginning 

"The spacious firmament on high." 

His Christian optimism is disclosed in the following 
excerpt from No. 381 of the Spectator: "An inward cheer- 
fulness is an implicit praise and thanksgiving to Providence 
under all its dispensations. It is a kind of acquiescence in 
the state wherein we are placed, and a secret approbation 
of the Divine Will in his conduct towards man." After 
studying these beautiful essays, and the still more beautiful 
character of their author, one is impelled to exclaim with 
Thackeray: "Commend me to this dear preacher without 
orders, this parson in the tie-wig. When this man looks from 
the world whose weakness he describes so benevolently up 
to the Heaven which shines over us all, I can hardly fancy a 
human face lighted up with a more serene rapture, a human 
intellect thrilling with purer love and adoration than Joseph 
Addison." 



POPE 251 

V. 

POPE. 

From the age of Milton to that of Byron the greatest 
name in English poesy is that of Alexander Pope. Thackeray 
calls him "one of the greatest literary artists England has 
seen." 

Born in 1688, his life of forty-six years was a struggle with 
almost every adverse condition which could possibly beset the 
human frame. He was a life-long invalid. In physical 
stature he was almost a dwarf, being but four feet in height. 
He was so frail as to be unable to dress himself without assist- 
ance. In addition to these physical handicaps he was born 
and reared a Roman Catholic, and was thus, by the harsh 
laws of the time, debarred from public office and from many 
lucrative professions. But one career was open to him, and 
that was literature. For it he sedulously prepared himself. 
He was almost entirely self-educated, never having attended 
school after his twelfth year. 

Pope's compositions are all models of meticulous care. 
No author, before or since his day, has worked harder to sub- 
ject every sentence to the highest degree of polish. He over- 
looks nothing. He leaves nothing undone to impart the 
keenest brilliance and the most perfect balance to each line 
and stanza of his work He is, therefore, as Johnson says, 
"read with perpetual delight." 

Says Taine, the French critic, discussing the youthful 
triumphs of Pope : "At sixteen, his pastorals bore witness to a 
correctness which no one had possessed, not even Dryden. 
To read these choice words, these exquisite arrangements of 
syllables, this science of division and rejection, this style so 
fluent and pure, these graceful images rendered still more 
graceful by the diction, and all this artificial and many- 
tinted garden of flowers which he called pastoral, people 
thought of the first eclogues of Virgil. * * * When later they 



252 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

appeared in one volume, the public was dazzled. The same 
year the poet of twenty-one finished his Essay on Criticism, 
a sort of Ars Poetica. It is the kind of a poem a man might 
write at the end of his career, when he has handled all modes 
of writing, and has grown gray in criticism; and in this sub- 
ject, whose treatment demands a whole literary life, he was 
in an instant as ripe as Boileau." In this poem, says Dr. 
Johnson, Pope has given us "the finest simile in our language:" 

"Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise." 

From the same poem the following well-known lines are taken : 

"Good nature and good sense must ever join: 

To err is human; to forgive, divine." 
Pope's Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, the most notable of 
his poems of passion and tenderness, was received with a burst 
of enthusiasm. In it "the beauty of his imagery and descrip- 
tions, the exquisite melody of his versification, rising and 
falling like the tones of an Eolian harp, have never been sur- 
passed." Johnson declared it among "the happiest pro- 
ductions of the human mind." It was rapturously praised by 
De Quincey and otheis. Lord Byron preferred it to the 
famous ode of Sappho. A few lines will indicate the trilling, 
harmonic sweetness of the poem. At the close of the portrait 
of the innocent nun, she is made to say: 

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! 

The world forgetting, by the world forgot: 

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! 

Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned; 

Labor and rest, that equal peiiods keep; 

Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep ; 

Desires composed, affections ever even; 

Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to heav'n. 

Grace shines around her, with serenest beams, 

And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams. 

For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms, 



POPE 253 

And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes; 
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring, 
For her white virgins hymeneals sing; 
To sounds of heavenly harps she dies away, 
And melts in visions of eternal day." 

Of Pope's Rape of the Lock, considered the greatest 
masterpiece of the sprightly style, Leslie Stephen said: "No 
more brilliant, sparkling, vivacious trifle is to be found in our 
literature." It is probably the greatest mock-heroic poem 
in any language. "It is," says Johnson, "the most airy, the 
most ingenious, and the most delightful of all Pope's com- 
positions." 

At the age of twenty-five Pope began his translation of 
Homer. He was aheady rated as the greatest living poet. 
The six volumes of the Iliad were published during the years 
1715-1720. This publication rendered his fame secure and 
placed him an immeasurable distance above and beyond all 
poets then living in England. Pope's Homer lacks fidelity 
to the original text, but, for all that, Johnson called it "the 
noblest version of poetry the world has ever seen." Gray 
predicted that no other translation would ever equal it. 
Byron said that as a boy he read it with rapture, and that 
no one would ever put it aside except for the original. From 
this work Pope reaped a profit of about $40,000. He had 
now gained both means and leisure to conduct his war on 
the Dunces. Pope was of a nervous, suspicious and irritable 
nature, given to introspection, his morbid mind naturally 
dwelling upon fancied injuries, and he decided, once for all, 
to even up all scores with his literary rivals. In this design 
he was encouraged by his ardent though indiscreet friend 
Dean Swift, himself the greatest satirist of the time, and to 
whom the Dunciad was dedicated The poem abounds in 
sharp and cutting thrusts and displays a wealth of genius 
worthy of a far better purpose. But the keenest and most 
finished bit of satire Pope ever wrote was the malevolent 



254 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

but powerful chaaracterization of Addison, which appeared 
in the prologue to the Satires, and in which he said that 
Addison could 

"Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer." 

Pope's Essay on Man is possibly the work with which the 
majority of his readers are most familiar. It is brilliant in 
style and finish, and rich in epigram. There is nothing 
exactly like it elsewhere. It abounds in popular passages, 
and among, the most familiar are these lines: 

"Vice is a monster of such horrid mien, 
As to be hated needs but to be seen; 
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 

And these: 

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast; 
Man never is, but always to be blest." 

And this familiar couplet: 

"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; 
The proper study of mankind is man." 

This work, with its doctrine that "whatever is, is right," 
together with its numerous philosophical speculations, drew 
replies from Voltaire in France, from Lessing in Germany, 
and from Crousaz, a Swiss philosopher. 

In his introductions and prefaces, Pope often displays 
great power as a writer of lucid prose, as well as a vast critical 
insight. Thus, in the preface to his translation of Homer, 
he says: "Homer was the greater genius; Virgil, the better 
artist; in the one, we most admire the man; in the other, the 
work. Homer hurries us with a commanding impetuosity; 
Virgil leads us with an attractive majesty. Homer scatters 
with a generous profusion; Virgil bestows with a careful 



POPE 255 

magnificence. Homer, like the Nile, pours out his riches 
with a sudden overflow; Virgil, like a river in its banks, with 
a constant stream. And when we look upon their machines, 
Homer seems like his own Jupiter, in his terrors, shaking 
Olympus, scattering the lightnings, and firing the heavens; 
Virgil, like the same power, in his benevolence, counselling 
with the gods, laying plans for empires, and ordering his 
whole creation." It is doubtful if any critic, ancient or 
modern, has so splendidly and succinctly compared the two 
great epic masters of antiquity. 

Pope's imitations of Horace are among the most delight- 
ful of his creations, and are quite as charming as the original. 
Among his shorter poems his Universal Prayer is one of the 
most beautiful. Nothing can be finer than this: 

'Teach me to feel another's woe, 

To hide the fault I see: 
That mercy I to others show, 

That mercy show to me." 

He wrote too little in this simple strain. This poem and 
an ode, The Dying Christian to His Soul (written at the 
request of Steele), show Pope at the height of his lyric power. 
They breathe forth a solemn purity, a noble tenderness and a 
softened, subdued and modest dignity so deeply consonant 
to the sweet serenity of prayer. 

In his fifty-sixth year, after a life of strife and pain, Pope 
passed away so peacefully that the watchers at his bedside 
could not ditinguish the moment of his death; so peacefully, 
indeed, that it seemed as if the powers of nature, hushed in 
the presence of expiring genius, had obeyed the behest of his 
own beautiful ode: 

"Cease, fond nature, cease thy strife, 
And let me languish into life!" 



256 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

VI. 
BYRON. 

Lord George Gordon Byron, the foremost English poet 
since Alexander Pope, is pre-eminently the great revolutionary 
poet of modern times. 

Born in 1788, just as the wave of revolution was threaten- 
ing to submerge all nations in its mighty sweep, he reached 
maturity at the close of the so-called Napoleonic wars, when 
his precocious love of liberty and his inborn sense of justice 
were rudly shocked to behold a world shackled in the meshes 
of the Holy Alliance and writhing hopelessly in the gyves 
of tyranny, stupidity and cant. 

The publication (at the age of nineteen) of his "Hours of 
Idleness" having evoked an exasperating criticism in the 
Edinburgh Review, Byron replied with his stinging "English 
Bards and Scotch Reviewers," in the year 1809, and in the 
same year departed for a tour of the Mediterranean countries. 
He returned in two years, and at once published the first two 
cantos of "The Pilgrimage of Childe Harold." His reputation 
was thus immediately established, at the early age of twenty- 
two. In his own words, "I woke to find myself famous." 
In the next four years he published "The Corsair," "The Siege 
of Corinth," and a number of other metrical tales which 
greatly increased his fame. And then, in 1815 he married. 
His troubles now began. Within a year his wife left him, 
nobody knew exactly why. Gossip busied itself with men- 
dacious tales. Churlish mediocrity, Puritan prudery, snobbish- 
ness and cant, with their maudlin blubberings, perceived 
their chance. Slander unleashed its envenomed dart. They 
drove forth the proud spirit they could not bend, and they 
made his name a byword and an hissing among the people. 
In 1816 he left England to return no more. 

He now had but eight more years to live. But they were 
busy years — years crowned with great works, such as "The 



BYRON 257 

Prisoner of Chillon," "Manfred," "Mazeppa," "Don Juan," 
the last two cantos of "Childe Harold" and indeed, the greater 
part of his life's work. Yet we are solemnly told that the 
period of his voluntary exile was a period of almost total 
depravity, a riot of unrestrained dissipation. The marvel 
is that so vast a volume of wonderful creations could have 
proceeded from a single pen in so short a time. But his 
enemies have preferred to slight his creations and magnify 
his recreations. 

Byron was not an irreligious man, as some parts of his 
drama entitled "Cain" might seem to indicate. In answer 
to certain strictures on this poem, offered by his close friend, 
the poet Thomas Moore, he wrote in 1822 from Pisa: 

"With respect to 'Religion,* can I never convince you 
that I have no such opinions as the characters in that drama, 
which seems to have frightened everybody? Yet they are 
nothing to the expressions in Goethe's Faust (which are ten 
times hardier), and not a whit more bold than those of Milton's 
Satan. My ideas of a character may run away with me; 
like all imaginative men, I, of course, embody myself with 
the character while I draw it, but not for a moment after 
the pen is from off the paper. 

"I am no enemy of religion, but the contrary. As a proof, 
I am educating my natural daughter a strict Catholic in a 
convent of Romagna, for I think people can never have 
enough of religion, if they are to have any. I incline, myself, 
very much to the Catholic doctrines; but if I am to write a 
drama, I must make my characters speak as I conceive them 
likely to argue." 

Lord Macaulay, who is usually wise even when he cannot 
be just, is neither wise nor just in his estimate of Byron. 
"And a few years more will destroy whatever yet remains of 
that magical potency which once belonged to the name of 
Byron," he wrote, in 1830. But Matthew Arnold wrote, in 
1881, of Byron and Wordsworth: "When the year 1900 is 



258 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

turned, and our nation comes to recount her poetic glories 
in the century which has then just ended, the first names with 
her will be these." English critics in general, have not com- 
prehended Byron as have the greatest intellects of other 
lands. The Frenchman, Taine, observes that "all styles 
appear dull beside his," and that "he is so great that from 
him alone we shall learn more truths of his country than 
from all the rest combined." Taine says that Byron's "Man- 
fred" is "twin-brother to the greatest poem of the age, Goethe's 
Faust." Goethe said of Byron: "The English can show no 

poet who is to be compared with him I cannot 

enough admire his genius." Goethe advised Eckermann to 
learn English only to read Byron, and added: "A character 
of such eminence has never existed before, and will probably 
never come again. Tasso's epic has maintained its fame, but 
Byron is the burning bush which reduces the cedar of Leba- 
non to ashes." Taine concludes: "If Goethe was the poet 
of the universe Byron was the poet of the individual; and if, 
in one, German genius found its interpreter, the English 
genius found its interpreter in the other." 

From the verdict of Goethe and Taine there is no dissent 
on the continent of Europe. "What," asks Castelar, "does 
Spain not owe to Byron? From his mouth came our hopes 
and fears. He has baptized us with his blood. There is no 
one with whose being some song of his is not woven." Dr. 
Karl Elze, an authority on the English classics, who held the 
chair of English literature in the University of Halle, names 
Byron as one of the four greatest poets of England, and also 
marks him as the intellectual parent of Lamartine and Musset 
in France, of Espronceda in Spain, of Puschkin in Russia, 
of Heine in Germany, and of Berchet in Italy. 

The great Italian Giuseppe Mazzini, in one of the most 
beautiful essays he has given to the world, discusses and 
compares Byron and Goethe. 



BYRON 259 

"Never did 'the eternal spirit of the chainless mind' 
make a brighter apparition amongst us," he says of Byron. 
"He seems at times a transformation of that immortal Prome- 
theus, of whom he has written so nobly; whose cry of agony, 
yet of futurity, sounded above the cradle of the European 
world; and whose grand and mysterious form, transfigured 
by time, reappears from age to age, between the entombment 
of one epoch and the accession of another, to wail forth the 
lament of genius, tortured by the presentiment of things it 

will not see realized in its time When he heard the 

cry of nationality and liberty burst forth in the land he had 
loved and sung in early youth, he broke his harp and set 
forth. While the Christian Powers were protocolizing or 
worse — while the Christian nations were doling forth the 
alms of a few piles of ball in aid of the Cross struggling with 
the Crescent, he, the poet, and pretended skeptic, hastened 
to throw his fortune, his genius, and his life at the feet of 
the first people that had arisen in the name of the nationality 
and liberty he loved. . . . 

"The day will come when democracy will remember all 
that it owes to Byron. England, too, will, I hope, one day 
remember the mission — so entire English, yet hitherto over- 
looked by her — which Byron fulfilled on the Continent; the 
European role given by him to English literature, and the 
appreciation and sympathy for England which he awakened 
amongst us. 

"Before he came, all that was known of English literature 
was the French translation of Shakespeare, and the anathema 
hurled by Voltaire against the 'intoxicated barbarian.' It is 
since Byron that we Continentalists have learned to study 

Shakespeare and other English writers England 

will one day feel how ill it is — not for Byron but for herself — 
that the foreigner who stands upon her shores should search 
in vain in that temple which should be her national Pantheon, 
for the poet beloved and admired by all the nations of Europe, 



260 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

and for whose death Greece and Italy wept as it had been the 
noblest of their own sons." 

Mazzini's rebuke is but too well deserved. When Byron, 
at Missolonghi, in 1824, had given his life for Greece, the 
Greek chieftains desired that he should sleep in the Temple 
of Theseus, at Athens. English friends, however, preferred 
that he should rest with the poets in Westminster Abbey. 
But when the body arrived in England the Dean of West- 
minster closed the doors of the English Pantheon against the 
ashes of the noblest Englishman of the nineteenth century, 
and the funeral procession moved sadly northward to New- 
stead Abbey, the ancestral seat of the poet's family. 

"When I was a boy I read Byron's Prisoner of Chillon. 
From that hour I have hated oppression in all its forms." 
The speaker was a United States Senator, William Joel Stone, 
of the State of Missouri. The incident is recalled a:, showing 
the world-wide influence of the great English poet who revered 
Washington, admired Franklin, eulogized Daniel Boone, 
referred to Patrick Henry as "the forest-born Demosthenes," 
and who said: "Give me a republic. The king- times are 
fast vanishing; there will be blood shed like water and tears 
like mist, but the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall 
not live to see it, but I foresee it." In the "Chillon" poem, in 
"Prometheus," and, indeed, wherever innocence and virtue 
tremble in the clutch of tyrannic power, Byron shows un- 
feigned sympathy for those who suffer and are cast down. 
Always and everywhere in the strife between freedom and 
autocracy, Byron is the friend of man. 

Taine regards "Don Juan" as Byron's masterpiece. 
But that, we suspect, is ony a characteristically French judg- 
ment. There are brilliant passages in all his poems. And 
there is very little of his work that fails to sustain the reader's 
interest. This is especially true of Childe Harold. Every- 
where are sunbursts of genius which light his pages with a 
glow that dims not with the lapse of time. Byron abounds 



BYRON 261 

in the sublime and beautiful. He may not be always correct. 
Nor is the diapason of the tempest always correct, when 
measured by the musical scale; but it drives its message 
home. And so does Byron speak in words that cause the 
blood to mount, whether he voice the passions of the heart 
or paint the splendors of the storm. There is in him, as 
Swinburne said, "the splendid and imperishable excellence 
which covers all his offenses and outweighs all his defects; 
the excellence of sincerity and strength." 

Byron struck the note of grandeur and sublimity as it 
was struck by no other English poet excepting Milton. His 
apostrophe to he ocean, at t e end of Childe Harold, is an 
example of this quality which is unsurpassed in any language. 
His description of Waterloo, in the third canto of this poem, 
stands alone. Beside it all other descriptions are colorless 
and mute. According to Longinus, the primary source of 
the sublime in writing is boldness and grandeur of thought. 
In this respect, Byron will not suffer in comparison with 
Homer or the Hebrew Scriptures. Consider, for example, his 
"Destruction of Sennacherib," closing with these lines: 

"And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, 
Has melted like snow in the glance of the Lord." 

Or his "Darkness:" 

"I had a dream, which was not all a dream. 

The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars 

Did wander darkling in the eternal space, 

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth 

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air," etc. 

Similar examples could be adduced without number. So 
powerful has been the appeal of the awful and the super- 
natural in Byron that he has been often called the poet of 
gloom, of melancholy, of hopeless woe. But such critics 
overlook both "Beppo" and "Don Juan." 



262 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

And there is another side of Byron, neither awe-inspiring 
and terrible, nor frivolous and amusing, but of surpassing 
lyrical beauty, sweetness and grace, such as "Fare Thee Well," 
"She Walks in Beauty," "Know Ye the Land," "The Isles of 
Greece," "Maid of Athens," and other poems of like character. 
Sir Walter Scott has truly said: "As various in composi- 
tion as Shakespeare himself, Lord Byron has embraced every 
type of human life, and sounded every string on the divine 
harp, from its slightest to its most powerful and heart- astound- 
ing tones." 

Byron was versed in Latin and Greek, and translated 
from both languages. He was master of Italian and French, 
but knew little of Spanish and no German. Of Goethe, who 
knew and understood him so well, he himself says that he 
knew nothing excepting a part of Faust, which was read to 
him and orally translated by a friend. He adored Alexander 
Pope almost to the point of fanaticism, detested Words- 
worth, and was a devoted admirer of Dante, Tasso and the 
other Italian immortals — preferring Tasso to Milton. 

As we are unable to trace Byron to any particular model, 
so also are we unable to point to his successor. Like Dante, 
he rules alone. Like the lightning from the cloud he came, 
and to the stormy elements he has returned. He has burned 
his way into the hearts of men, and his fame will last while 
literature endures. 

VII. 
SCOTT. 

Sir Walter Scott, the founder of the historical novel, and 
composer of some of the most stirring and beautiful martial 
poetry ever written in the British Isles, was born in Edin- 
burgh, August 15, 1771, the son of a Scotch lawyer. Young 
Scott was called to the bar in 1792, and carried on a desultory 
practice for fourteen years, but was at no time wedded to 
his profession. 



SCOTT 263 

Scott was thoroughly conversant with Spanish, French, 
Italian and German. He first became seriously interested in 
literature through his study of German. His first publica- 
tion was a translation, in 1796, of two of Burger's ballads. 
In 1799 he published his translation of Goethe's "Goetz von 
Berlichingen." From his early youth Scott had been a 
student of the ballad. In 1802, at the age of thirty-one, he 
gave to the world his "Border Minstrelsy," which gained for 
him immediate popularity. With the publication of "The 
Lay of the Last Minstrel," in 1805, he became the most 
popular poet of the day. "Marmion" followed in 1808, and 
"The Lady of the Lake," in 1820. His later poetical works 
were not so well received. In 1814 the first of his novels, 
"Waverly," appeared, followed by that incomparable suc- 
cession of romances during the next eighteen years which 
made their author the most popular prose writer in all the 
world. He continued to write until his paralytic hand could 
no longer grasp the pen, and death came in 1832, about six 
months after the death of Goethe. 

Scott is not among the greatest of poets, and yet in his 
greater poems there are lines which will never die. While 
love of country endures in the hearts of men, the patriot will 
not forget these lines from the first stanza, Canto vi., of 
"The Lay of the Last Minstrel:" 

"Breathes there a man with soul so dead 
Who never to himself has said, 

This is my own, my native land! 
Whose heart has ne'er within him burn'd 
As home his footsteps he has turned 

From wandering on a foreign strand? 
If such there breathe, go, mark him well! 
For him no minstrel raptures swell ; 
High though his titles, proud his name, 
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, — 
Despite those titles, power and pelf, 



264 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

The wretch, concentered all in self, 

Living, shall forfeit fair renown, 

And doubly dying, shall go down 

To the vile dust from whence he sprung, 

Unwep't, unhonor'd and unsung." 

Many critics have thought "Marmion" to be superior to 
all the other metrical creations of Scott. Certainly no poem 
of his abounds in more fine passages or has a greater tendency 
to fire the blood. What can be finer than his description of 
the castle, in the first canto? 

"Day set on Norham's castled steep, 
And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, 

And Cheviot's mountains lone : 
The battled towers, the donjon keep, 
The loophole grates, where captives weep, 
The flanking walls that round it sweep, 

In yellow luster shone. 
The warriors on the turrets high, 
Moving athwart the evening sky, 

Seem'd forms of giant height. 
Their armor, as it caught the rays, 
Flashed back again the western blaze, 

In lines of dazzling light." 

These lines, with two succeeding stanzas, are seldom 
equalled in descriptive poetry. Indeed, the entire poem 
abounds in beauties which so strike the ear or touch the heart 
of mankind as to assure the immortality of the work. Such, 
for example, is this, from the sixth canto: 

"O Woman! in our hours of ease 
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, 
And variable as the shade 
By the light quivering aspen made ; 
When pain and anguish wring the brow, 
A ministering angel thou." 



SCOTT 265 

Such lines may not present the highest form of poe- 
try; but, nevertheless, they cannot be forgotten. It may 
be doubted if there was ever penned a more stirring picture 
of a battle scene than this, from the same canto, stanza 32: 

"The war that for a space did fail, 
Now trebly thundering swell'd the gale, 

And — Stanley! was the cry; 
A light on Marmion's visage spread, 

And fired his glazing eye : 
With dying hand, above his head, 
He shook the fragment of his blade, 

And shouted "Victory! — 
Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on! 
Were the last words of Marmion." 

Mackintosh says that "The Lady of the Lake has nothing 
so good as the death of Marmion." But where shall we find a 
sweeter bugle note than the song in the first canto of The 
Lady of the Lake: 

"Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er, 

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking; 
Dream of battlefields no more," etc. 

The Highland boat song, in the second canto, is another 
masterpiece. The famous battle scene in the sixth canto of 
The Lady of the Lake may be said to at least rival anything 
in Marmion — or elsewhere in poetry of its kind. Particularly 
striking is the 18th stanza. The reader can almost hear the 
clash of sword and lance as the cry rings out — 

"Where, where was Roderick then! 
One blast upon his bugle h rn 

Were worth a thousand men!" 

Scott quit writing poetry, as he has himself told us, 
because of the rising popularity of Byron, with whom he did 
not feel able to compete. He was inspired to write fiction, 



266 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

he tells us, by reading the novels of Cervantes. The success 
of "Waverly" was so complete that Scott devoted the greater 
part of the remainder of his life to writing historical novels. 
Seldom has the world witnessed such an unbroken train of 
literary successes — Kenilworth, Old Mortality, Ivanhoe, Red- 
gauntlet, Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, Rob Roy — we 
need not enumerate the well remembered names. A hundred 
years have passed, and their hold upon the public cannot yet 
be said to be broken. 

Scott gained almost a million dollars by his writings, 
and lost it all. The failure of his publishers involved him 
to the extent of half a million dollars. The last six years of 
his life were spent in a brave struggle to pay the debt. Strug- 
gling against advancing age and the insidious approach of 
disease, he battled on, and could he have lived another ten 
years he would have paid it all. He had earned nearly $200,- 
000.00 for his creditors when he breathed his last, at his 
beloved Abbottsford, on September 15, 1832. 

Scott was the kindliest and most genial of men. As one 
of his old Scotch companions said of him, "whether drunk or 
sober, he was aye the gentleman." He lived an innocent and 
wholesome life, and he leaves no printed word to soil his 
memory. When death approached he called for Lockhart, 
his son-in-law. "Lockhart," said he, "I may have but a 
minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good man — be virtuous 
— be religious — be a good man. Nothing else will give you 
any comfort when you come to lie here." 



VIII. 
WORDSWORTH. 

William Wordsworth was born in 1770. He was gradu- 
ated from Cambridge at the age of twenty-one. After two 
visits to France, and an attempt to take part with the Giron- 
dists in the French Revolution, Wordsworth returned to 



WORDSWORTH 267 

England to spend (with the exception of an occasional excur- 
sion) the remainder of his uneventful life in the country, 
chiefly at Grasmere and Rydal Mount, in the lake region. 
Early in life he became intimate with Samuel Taylor Cole- 
ridge. The two poets visited Germany in 1799, where Cole- 
ridge perfected himself in German and began his translation 
of Schiller's "Wallenstein." 

Wordsworth's first volume was "Lyrical Ballads," 
published jointly by himself and Coleridge in 1798. This 
volume marks the beginning of the Romantic movement in 
English poetry, and is epochal in its literary significance. 
The volume contains Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner," but 
the greater portion of the remainder was the work of Words- 
worth. The book was republished in 1800 and in 1802. 
His "Ode to Duty" was brought out in 1805, and the "Ode 
on the Intimations of Immortality" in 1806. "The Excur- 
sion" and "Laodamia" were published in 1814. Other poems 
followed at intervals during the next twenty years. He wrote 
practically nothing during the last fifteen years of his life. 
When Southey died, in 1843, Wordsworth was appointed Poet 
Laureate, an honor which he at first refused and was with 
difficulty induced to accept. Seven years later he died, at 
the age of eighty. 

For at least a quarter of a century, and during the period 
in which he was producing his best work, Wordsworth was 
obliged to endure the combined assault of all the great critics 
in England and Scotland, besides the scorn of the majority 
of the poets of his day. But his faith in himself, in his work, 
and in his mission, at no time faltered. He cared nothing for 
praise or blame, and seldom read any of the criticisms of his 
works. 

Wordsworth was no great lover of books. But his love 
of nature amounted to an infatuation. His love of rocks and 
lakes and flowers and trees was almost as vehement and 
personal as that which is recorded of St. Francis of Assisi, 



268 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

in Section XII. of "The Mirror of Perfection." Nearly the 
whole of his long life was devoted to the serene contemplation 
of nature's grandeur and beauty, and to companionship with 
the elements. Far from the busy haunts of men, drinking in 
the splendors of the sunset or the glories o.f the dawn, weaving 
his dreams among the fitting clouds, claiming comradeship 
with the mountains and the stars, with ear attuned alike 
to the carol of the lark or the whisper of the leaf, Words- 
worth knew and loved the natural world as no other English 
poet ever did. And it is this love and this knowledge which 
gleam, in all his works, with an intensity which draws his 
devotees as if obsessed by a spell, and makes of his following 
a cult. "The very image of Wordsworth," writes De Quincey, 
for example, "as I prefigured it to my own planet-struck eye, 
crushed my faculties as before Elijah or St. Paul." 

Hazlett, in the following excerpt, affords an excellent 
characterization of the great English pastoral poet: "There 
is a lofty philosophic tone, a thoughtful humanity, infused into 
his pastoral vein. Remote from the passions and events of 
the great world, he has communicated interest and dignity 
to the primal movements of the heart of man, and ingrafted 
his own conscious reflections on the casual thoughts of hinds 
and shepherds." As Mathew Arnold says (Essays in Criti- 
cism), "Wordsworth's poetry is great because of the extra- 
ordinary power with which Wordsworth feels the joy offered 
to us in nature, the joy offered to us in the simple primary affec- 
tions and duties ; and because of the extraordinary power with 
which, in case after case, he shows us this joy and renders it 
so as to make us share it." But when Dr. Arnold, in the same 
essay, places Wordsworth before all English poets excepting 
Milton and Shakespeare, before all the French since Moliere, 
before all the Germans excepting Goethe, and before all the 
Italians since the sixteenth century, he goes farther than many 
judicious critics will care to accompany him. 



WORDSWORTH 269 

Saintsbury declares that the greater odes of Wordsworth 
are unsurpassed by any poet, not even excepting Milton. 
It is in his odes and sonnets, indeed, that Wordsworth strikes 
the majestic note which places him far above the majority 
of the poets of his time. Of these splendid productions the 
following sonnet is an example: 

"The world is too much with us : late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers : 
Little we see in nature that is ours; 
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; 
The winds that will be howling at all hours, 
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers ; 
For this, for everything, we are out of tune; 
It moves us not. — Great God! I'd rather be 
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn ; 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would made me less forlorn; 
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ; 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 

An excerpt from his great ode on "Intimations of Immortality" 
is quoted in the essay on Plato in this volume. An- 
other of his most beautiful poems is the one entitled "Lines 
composed a few miles above Tin tern Abbey." It is in these 
lines that he gives us so much that we may now characterize 
as truly "Wordsworthian." A specimen phrase is this: 

"That best portion of a good man's life, — 
His little, nameless, unremembered acts 
Of kindness and of love." 

In this poem we also find these characteristic lines : 

"A sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 



270 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

And the round ocean and the living air 

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, — 

A motion and a spirit that impels 

All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 

And rolls through all things." 

In another of his poems he says: 

"Plain living and high thinking are no more. 
The homely beauty of the good old cause 
Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence, 
And pure religion breathing household laws." 

In the same spirit he writes this, in a letter to a friend : "It is 
an awful truth that there neither is nor can be any genuine 
enjoyment of poetry among nineteen out of twenty of those 
persons who live, or wish to live, in the broad light of the 
world — among those who either are, or are striving to make 
themselves, people of consideration in society. This is a 
truth, and an awful one; because to be incapable of a feeling 
of poetry, in my sense of the word, is to be without love of 
human nature and reverence for God." 

Such thoughts, expressed with such a deep sincerity and 
spiritual earnestness in his poetry, at first shocked his genera- 
tion, and then subjected it to his will. In Wordsworth there 
is peace, because he engenders a train of thought which ends 
in the holy calm of a soothed and rested mind. John Stuart 
Mill, in his Autobiography, says: "What made Words- 
worth's poems a medicine for my state of mind was that they 
expressed not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and 
of thought colored by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. 
They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings which I was 
in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a source of in- 
ward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which 
could be shared by all human beings, which had no con- 
nection with struggle or imperfection, but would be made 
richer by every improvement in the physical or social con- 



DICKENS 271 

dition of mankind. From them I seemed to learn what would 
be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils 
of life shall have been removed. And I felt myself at once 
better and happier as I came under their influence." 

Wordsworth had, in his own beautiful words, listened to 
the "still, sad music of humanity," and grasped the rhythm 
of its secret chords. Upon the whole, there is no better sum- 
mary of his work than the sentence uttered by Keble, author 
of the "Christian Year," who claimed for him "that he had 
shed a celestial light upon the affections, the occupations, 
the piety of the poor." 



IX. 

DICKENS. 



Charles Dickens is the Shakespeare of the novel. He 
lives in his characters. We may speak of the books of other 
authors. But with Dickens the case is far different. We are 
not interested so much in the novels as we are in the striking 
personages who inhabit them. Mr. Pecksniff exists for us, 
apparently, quite independently of the novel "Martin Chuzzle- 
wit." We do not, in the ordinary sense, re-read "The Pick- 
wick Papers." We simply renew our acquaintance with Sam 
Welter and Mr. Pickwick. Not to know these amiable 
creatures is to miss half the joy of life. Not to know them 
connotes a degree of ignorance approximating the stupidity 
of persons unacquainted with the commonest facts of history. 
Critics have decried the work of Dickens because of what they 
term its tendency to caricature, its approach to the grotesque, 
its proneness to exaggeration. If this indictment is to be 
taken as true, and if, in consequence, we may truly say that 
the people of Dickens are not drawn from life, then, indeed, 
so much the greater genius is Dickens, whose "Imagination 
bodies forth the forms of things unknown," and whose 
wondrous gift 



272 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

"Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 

Are there, then, no Pickwicks in the world? If not — all the 
worse for the world! Does little Nell exist only in Heaven, 
a kind of glorified Beatrice in Paradise? Perhaps. Out of 
the fullness of his own experience let the reader judge. But 
if the Dickens characters are not of this world, if we are 
never to meet them in the highways and byways of life, then 
it behooves us to seek without delay those enchanted realms 
of the imagination wherein they dwell. Let the Scotch poet, 
Alexander Smith, be our guide: 

"If Mr. Dickens' characters were gathered together," 
says he, "they would constitute a town populous enough to 
send a representative to Parliament. Let us enter. The 
style of architecture is unparalleled. There is an individuality 
about the buildings. In some obscure way they remind one 
of human faces. There are houses sly-looking, houses 
wicked-looking, houses pompous-looking. Heaven bless us! 
what a rakish pump! What a self-important town-hall! 
What a hard-hearted prison! The dead walls are covered 
with advertisements of Mr. Sleary's circus. Newman Noggs 
comes shambling along. Mr. and Misses Pecksniff come 
sailing down the sunny side of the street. Miss Mercy's 
parasol is gay; papa's neckcloth is white and terribly starched. 
Dick Swiveller leans against a wall, his hands in his pockets, a 
primrose held between his teeth, contemplating the opera of 
Punch and Judy, which is being conducted under the manage- 
ment of Messrs. Codling and Short. You turn a corner, and 
you meet the coffin of little Paul Dombey being borne along. 
In the afternoon you hear the rich tones of the organ from Miss 
LaCreevy's first floor, for Tom Pinch has gone there to live 
now; and as you know all the people as you know your own 
brothers and sisters, and consequently require no letters of 
introduction, you go up and talk with the dear old fellow 
about all his friends and your friends, and towards evening 



DICKENS 273 

he takes your arm, and you walk out to see poor Nelly's 
grave." 

We no longer require the guidance of the Scotch poet. 
Returning in the gloaming we pass through Dingley Dell. 
Wardle's hearty laughter rings among the rafters of the old 
farm house and lingers along the lonely vale, where sundry 
figures creep from among the shadows. Note the gruff old 
sailor, with the bright-faced boy at his side. Anon we hear 
a voice: 

"Wal'r, my boy, in the Proverbs of Solomon you will find 
the following words: 'May we never want a friend in need 
nor a bottle to give him.' When found, make a note of." 
And there comes another, with his eye still fixed on the coast of 
Greenland — Captain Cuttle's oracular friend, the Admiral! 
There is a flutter along the hedge. Avast! It is the widow 
Mac Stinger. Let her pass, with all the little Mac Stingers, 
an endless procession of marital bliss. And the woman with 
her? No, that is not Peggotty. We recognize the shawl. 

"And widge I was saying to Mrs. Harris" — 

Here she was interrupted by the tones of a flute. It was 
Mr. Mell, and he blew it ' 'until I almost thought he would 
gradually blow his whole being into the large hole at the top, 
and ooze away at the keys." — And Sairy Gamp concluded 
that she had no preference as to her ale, excepting that she 
liked it "reg'lar," and "draw'd mild." 

See them as they come trooping along the lanes and by- 
paths of memory , a motley throng, making another pilgrimage 
to another Canterbury, with one greater than Chaucer for a 
guide— 

"Chambermaid in love with Boots, 
Toodles, Traddles, Tapley, Toots, 
Betsey Trotwood, Mr. Dick, 
Susan Nipper, Mistress Chick, 
Snevellicci, Lilyvick, 
Mantalini's predilections 



274 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

To transfer his warm affections, 
By poor Barnaby and Grip, 
Flora, Dora, Di and Gip, 
Perrybingle, Pinch and Pip — " 

But hark! The sound of a coach! Do you not hear the horn 
of the guard? 

"Yoho, among the gathering shades; making of no account 
the deep reflections of the trees, but scampering on through 

light and darkness all the same Yoho, beside the 

village green, where cricket players linger yet, and every 
little indentation made in the grass by bat or wicket, ball or 
player's foot, sheds out its perfume on the night 

"Yoho, behind there, stop that bugle for a moment! 
Come creeping over to the front, along the coach roof, guard, 
and make one at this basket! .... Ah! It's long since 
this bottle of old wine was brought into contact with the 
mellow breath of night, you may depend, and rare good stuff 
it is to wet a bugler's whistle with. Only try it. Don't be 
afraid of turning up your finger, Bill, another pull! Now 
take your breath and try the bugle, Bill. There's music! 
There's a tone! 'Over the hills and far away,' indeed, Yoho! 
The skittish mare is all alive tonight. Yoho! Yoho! 

"See the bright moon; high up before we know it; making 
the earth reflect the objects on its breast like water. . . . 

"Clouds, too! And a mist upon the hollow! Not a dull 
fog that hides it, but a light, airy, gauze-like mist, which in 
our eyes of modest admiration gives a new charm to the 
beauties it is spread before. . . . Yoho! Why, now we travel 
like the moon herself. Hiding this minute in a grove of trees, 
next minute in a patch of vapor, emerging now upon our 
broad, clear course, withdrawing now. but always dashing 
on, our journey is a counterpart of hers. Yoho! A match 
against the Moon!" 

And so we come, not to London with Tom Pinch, but the 
coach draws up to Dingley Dell, to discharge its cargo of 



DICKENS 275 

immortals. See them alight, aided by old Tony Weller and 
Sam! The great Sergeant Buzfuz is there, attended by 
Mr. Perker of Grey's Inn, and the learned Snubbin. Dr. 
Blimber, Dodson & Fogg, Mr. Solomon Pell (friend of the 
Lord Chancellor), Carker with his cat-like teeth, Wickfield 
and Uriah Heep, Jonas Chuzzlewit and Sykes, Bob Sawyer, 
Alfred Jingle and Squeers, and all the rest, come tumbling 
out like the contents of another Noah's Ark, and over all 
beams the serene countenance of the noble Pickwick himself. 
They enter at old Wardle's cheery call, to find that Mr. 
Micawber has the punch all ready, and when they proceed to 
the hospitable table there sits Tiny Tim, and we hear again 
his benediction, — "God bless us, every one!" 

"Joe!" old Wardle calls; "damn that boy, he's gone to 
sleep again!" 

Peaceful be his slumbers, and may he waken with us all 
in the land of the Master's dreams! 

As Thackeray said, in his lecture on Charity and Humor, 
"One might go on, though the task would be endless and need- 
less, chronicling the names of kind folks with whom this kind 
genius has made us familiar. Who does not love the Mar- 
chioness and Mr. Richard Swiveller? Who does not sym- 
pathize, not only with Oliver Twist, but his admirable young 
friend, the Artful Dodger? Who has not the inestimable 
advantage of possessing a Mrs. Nickleby in his own family? 
Who does not bless Sairey Gamp and wonder at Mrs. Harris? 
Who does not venerate the chief of that illustrious family 
who, being stricken by misfortune, wisely and greatly turned 
his attention to 'coals,' the accomplished, the Epicurean, 
the dirty, the delightful Micawber? 

"I may quarrel with Mr. Dickens' art a thousand and a 
thousand times; I delight and wonder at his genius; I recognize 
in it — I speak with awe and reverence — a commission from 
that Divine Beneficence whose blessed task we know it will 
one day be to wipe every tear from every eye. Thankfully 



276 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

I take my share of the feast of love and kindness which this 
gentle and generous and charitable soul has contributed to 
the happiness of the world. I take and enjoy my share, and 
say a benediction for the meal." 

The descriptive powers of Dickens are phenomenal. As 
a delineator of child life he has never had an equal, and the 
Dickens child-characters have won the heart of the world. 
His work in this regard is one of the peculiar glories of English 
literature. In this respect some great literatures are barren. 
Thus, as Taine remarks, "We have no children in French 
literature." And, indeed, we can recall very few in either 
the Italian or the Spanish. In his portraiture of morbidity, 
of the insane and the feeble-minded, Taine thinks that he is 
equalled by no writer save Ernst Hoffman. But Balzac is 
the Continental writer with whom Dickens is most frequently 
if not most aptly compared. Tolstoy, the great Russian, 
declared that both Dickens and Balzac produced some in- 
artistic work, but he believed Dickens to be the greater author. 

But the most astounding powers of Dickens are called 
into play when he touches at will the chords of joy and sorrow, 
plunging from the height of gaiety to the depths of woe, and 
with equal facility leaping back again, often showering smiles 
athwart the tears like sunbeams through a mist, and blending 
pathos and humor in those fascinating mystic soul-tints 
which no other artist's hand has ever drawn. 

E. P. Whipple, an American critic, observes: "It is 
difficult to say whether Dickens is more successful in humor 
or pathos. It is certain that his genius can as readily draw 
tears as provoke laughter. Sorrow, want, poverty, pain, 
death, the affections which cling to earth and those which 
rise above it he represents always with power, and often with 
marvelous skill. His style, in the serious moods of his mind, 
has a harmony of flow which often glides unconsciously into 
metrical arrangement, and is full of those words 



DICKENS 277 

'Which fall as soft as snow on the sea, 
And melt in the heart as instantly." 

One source of his pathos is the intense and purified conception 
he has of moral beauty — of that beauty which comes from a 
thoughtful brooding over the most solemn and affecting 
realities of life. The character of little Nell is an illustration. 
The simplicity of this creation, framed as it is from the finest 
elements of human nature, and the unambitious mode of its 
development through the motley scenes of the Old Curiosity 
Shop are calculated to make us overlook its rare merit as a 
work of high poetic genius. Amidst the wolfish malignity 
of Quilp, the suggared meanness of Brass, the roaring con- 
viviality of Swiveller, amidst scenes of selfishness and shame, 
of passion and crime, this delicate creation moves along, 
unsullied, purified, pursuing the good in the simple earnestness 
of a pure heart, gliding to the tomb as to a sweet sleep, and 
leaving in every place that her presence beautifies the marks 
of celestial footprints. Sorrows such as hers, over which so 
fine a sentiment sheds its consecrations, have been well s&id 
to be ill-bartered for the ganshness of joy; 'for they win us 
softly from life and fit us to die smiling'." 

But, quite apart from the benefits of his refreshing humor 
and the uplifting power of his sweet and ennobling spirituality, 
Dickens accomplished much for the civic, industrial and social 
betterment of his generation and for posterity as well. He it 
was who first attacked imprisonment for debt. He was the 
first great prison reformer. In the matter of legal administra- 
tion he did more than any other man to accomplish the 
substitution of reasonable codes for the interminable proc- 
esses of chancery. He smote the "circumlocution office" 
and made official "red tape" forever unpopular. He launched 
his bolts against the miserable makeshift of a military com- 
missariat, and from that day forth the lot of a British soldier 
has been easier and his burdens lighter. He hurled the shafts 
of his bitter, blighting irony and the terrible force of his 



278 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

heart-stirring pathos against the English factory system, 
against industrial serfdom in the mines and elsewhere, and 
the lives of laboring men are better and upon higher standards 
because of his work. He struck at the debasing tyranny of 
the petty tyrant of the schoolroom, and the lives of little 
children have been macle happier and brighter as a result. 
But, above all else, there resounds throughout his life's work 
the pure note of democracy and the death-knell of snobbish- 
ness in all its forms, and always and everywhere the appeal 
for justice rings clear and true. 

Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and died in 1870. The 
hard and miserable life of his early youth is paraphrased to 
some extent in his "David Copperfield," as we are informed 
by Foster in his life of Dickens. His youth and early man- 
hood saw little of the brighter side of life. But, for all that, 
no writer in all the literature of the world has a better right 
to be called The Apostle of Good Cheer. 



x. 

TENNYSON. 



The volume of Tennyson's poems containing "Oenone" 
"The Lotos Eaters," "A Dream of Fair Women," and "The 
Lady of Shalott," published in 1832, was brought to America 
by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who loaned it to many of his 
friends of Harvard College. James Russell Lowell was one 
of those who thus received his first knowledge of Tennyson 
from the hand of Emerson. The British poet had published 
his first poems in 1830. 

In 1842 appeared the volume containing "Morte d' 
Arthur," "Ulysses," and "Locksley Hall." This volume 
secured his fame. In 1847 he published "The Princess," 
and in 1850 "In Memoriam." Between 1850 and 1875, at 
intervals of about five years, he published his "Maud," 
"Idylls of the King" (the first four), "Enoch Arden," and 



TENNYSON 279 

'The Holy Grail," followed by other ''Idylls." These were 
his major works. But he continued writing until the end 
of his long life. His "Crossing the Bar" was written when 
he was eighty-one years of age. It is one of the best known 
of his poems, and it is so beautiful, so sweet, and so character- 
istic of the poet in his best mood, that it is here given in full: 

Sunset and evening star, 

And one clear call for me! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar, 

When I put out to sea; 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too full of sound and foam, 
When that which drew from out the boundless deep 

Turns, again home. 

Twilight and evening bell, 

And after that the dark! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell 

When I embark; 

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place, 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 

When I have crossed the bar. 

When Longfellow, the American poet, in 1859, read the 
first four "Idylls" he wrote to a friend: " 'The Idylls' are 
a great success. Rich tapestries, wrought as only Tennyson 
could have done them, and worthy to hang beside 'The Faerie 
Queen.' I believe there is no discordant voice on this side 
the water." Longfellow judged correctly. Tennyson's re- 
semblance to Spenser has been remarked by others also. 
Taine, the Frenchman, noticed it. But he wrote in styles as 
varied as his subjects. As Taine remarks (English Lit., 
Vol. 4, p. 661): "He wrote in every accent, and delighted 
in entering into the feelings of all ages. He wrote of St. 



280 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSLS 

Agnes, St. Simon Stylites, Ulysses, Oenone, Sir Galahad, 
Lady Clare, Fatima, the Sleeping Beauty. He imitated 
alternately Homer and Chaucer, Theocritus and Spenser, 

the old English poets and the old Arabian poets He 

was like those musicians who use their bow in the service of 
all masters." 

The exquisitely modulated harmony of his numbers and 
the smooth and equable movement of his verse are outstand- 
ing features of his metrical compositions. These capital 
traits are strikingly illustrated in the following verses from 
"The Princess:" 

The splendor falls on castle walls, 

And snowy summits old in story; 
The long light shakes across the lakes, 
And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying; 
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, 

And thinner, clearer, farther going! 
O sweet and far from cliff and scar 

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! 
Blow, let us hear the purple gems replying, 
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

O love, they die in yon rich sky, 

They faint on hill or field or river ; 
Our echoes roll from soul to soul, 
And grow forever and forever. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying. 
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. 

Such artistry cannot be too highly praised. Another song 
from "The Princess" has become the best known lullaby in 
the English tongue: 



TENNYSON 281 

Sweet and low, sweet and low, 

Wind of the western sea, 
Low, low, breathe and blow, 

Wind of the western sea! 
Over the rolling waters go, 
Come from the dying moon, and blow, 

Blow him again to me; 
While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps. 

We believe that it is in just such rare and dainty bits t hat 
Tennyson excels all the poets of his time. They are like 
miniature paintings by a master hand. The more they are 
studied the more they disclose, behind their vermeil veil of 
modesty, their great creator's power. They are like shrinking 
flowers whose beauty is first made known by the fragrance 
they exhale. The following is an unsurpassed example of 
Tennyson in his peculiar and all but exclusive field: 

Break, break, break 

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! 
And I would that my tongue could utter 

The thoughts that arise in me. 

O well for the fisherman's boy, 

That he shouts with his sister at play! 

O well for the sailor lad, 

That he sings in his boat on the bay ! 

And the stately ships go on 

To their haven under the hill; 
But O for the touch of a vanished hand 

And the sound of a voice that is still ! 

Break, break, break 

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! 
But the tender grace of a day that is dead 

Will never come back to me. 



282 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

In Tennyson there is none of the wild, tempestuous force of 
Byron. He approximates the technical correctness of Pope 
and the tender elegance of Wordsworth and Keats, whose 
intellectual heir he undoubtedly was. But, as remarked 
above, his style is not always the same. Sometimes he 
breaks forth in a far richer strain and his verses, flashing with 
color, gleam like a jeweled brocade zoned with silken gold, 
or a morning sky shot o'er with silver stars, empurpled by 
the streaks of dawn. Contemporary critics were a unit in 
his praise. Mr. McCarthy, in his "History of Our Own 
Times," declares: "Mr. Tennyson is beyond doubt the 
most complete of the poets of Queen Victoria's time. No one 
else has the same combination of melody, beauty and de- 
scription, culture and intellectual power. He has sweetness 
and strength in exquisite combination." In Stedman's 
Victorian Poets, it is said that he is "Certainly to be regarded 
in time to come as, all in all, the fullest representative of the 

refined, speculative and complex Victorian age In 

technical excellence, as an artist in verse, Tennyson is the 
greatest of modern poets." He has usually been known as a 
poet of the intellect rather than for his mastery of the pas- 
sions. Whipple, the American critic, in his Essays and 
Reviews, says: "His poetry is marked by intellectual 
intensity as distinguished from intensity of feeling." Bayard 
Taylor was undoubtedly correct in his judgment that "Ten- 
nyson's place in the literature of the English language, 
whatever may be his relation to the acknowledged masters 
of song, is sure to be high and permanent." 

The life of Tennyson was as uneventful as that of Words- 
worth. He was born in 1809 and died in 1892. He was the 
third child in a family of twelve. His father was a clergyman 
in Lincolnshire, and a man of unusual intelligence. The 
poet was entered as a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, 
where he attained, even in his youth, some eminence as a 
poet. But he left the university in 1831 without having 



TENNYSON 283 

taken a degree, and thenceforth devoted the remainder of 
his life to poetry. For over sixty years he toiled away at 
his art, and lived the life of a literary recluse. His first 
productions were rather inhospitably received by the critics. 
Literary history affords no more conspicuous example of 
excellence attained through great labor, and of persistent 
effort, rightly directed, culminating in the highest triumphs 
of genius. 

As late as 1850 he was still in a state of relative obscurity. 
In that year died Wordsworth, the poet laureate. The honor 
was at once offered to Samuel Rogers, author of "The Pleas- 
ures of Memory," then in his eighty-ninth year. The 
venerable poet declined the honor, because of his age, but 
ventured to suggest Alfred Tennyson for the post. Lord 
Palmerston, the British premier, replied: "We know nothing 
of this gentleman." Twenty years after the publication of 
his first volume, eighteen years after the publication of his 
"Morte d'Arthur," "Ulysses," and "Locksley Hall," and 
three years after publishing "The Princess," and in the very 
year of his publication of "In Memoriam," the British gov- 
ernment had never heard of Alfred Tennyson, the greatest 
of the "Victorians!" But he was nevertheless appointed, 
upon the suggestion of Rogers. Thirty-four years later, in 
1884, he accepted a peerage and thus became the first mem- 
ber of the English House of Lords selected alone because 
of his literary distinction. He had previously declined the 
honor twice; for Tennyson believed, and in the depths of his 
democratic heart he knew, the truth of these lines, which 
he had written in 1832: 

"Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 
'Tis only noble to be good. 

Kind hearts are more than coronets 

And simple faith than Norman blood." 

Tennyson produced some of his best work in the treat- 
ment of topics of current interest. Among these poems may 



284 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO PARNASSUS 

be mentioned his "Ode on the Duke of Wellington," and his 
"Charge of the L'ght Brigade." During the recent interna- 
tional crisis these prophetic lines from "Locksley Hall," 
published in 1842, were recalled throughout the world: 

For I dipped into the future as far as human eye could see, 
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonders that would 

be; 
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, 
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly 

- bales; 
Heard the Heavens filled with shouting, and there rained 

a ghastly dew 
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue ; 
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing 

warm, 
With the standards of the peoples plunging through the 

thunderstorm ; 
Till the war drum throbbed no longer and the battle flags 

were furled 
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. 
There the common-sense of most shall hold a fretful realm 

in awe, 
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law. 

And so Alfred Tennyson moved through life, reticent, 
retiring, savoring more of the cloister than of the court, 
hermit-like, uttering his soul-cries and his prophecies; like 
the voices of Dodona, always heard, but by the public never 
seen. As W. Howitt wrote, so long ago: "You may hear 
the voice, but where is the man? He is wandering in some 
dreamland beneath the shade of old and charmed forests, 
by far-off shores, where 

'All night 
The plunging seas draw backward from the land 
Their moon-led waters white;' 



TENNYSON 285 

by the old mill-dam, thinking of the merry miller and his 
pretty daughter; or is wandering over the open wolds, where 

'Nor'land whirlwinds blow.' 

From all places — from the silent corridor of an ancient con- 
vent; from some shrine where a devoted knight recites his 
vows ; from the drear monotony of the moated grange, or the 
ferny forest, beneath the talking oak, — comes the voice of 
Tennyson, rich, dreamy, passionate, yet not impatient — 
musical with the airs of chivalrous ages, yet mingling in his 
songs the theme and spirit of those that are yet to come." 



INDEX. 



(287) 



TO MY BOOKS 

As one who, destined from his friends to part, 
Regrets his loss, but hopes again er'while 
To share their converse and enjoy their smile, 

And tempers, as he may, affliction's dart. 

Thus, loved associates, chiefs of elder art, 

Teachers of wisdom, who could once beguile 
My tedious hours, and lighten every toil, 

I now resign you, nor with fainting heart. 

For pass a few short years, or days, or hours, 
And happier seasons may their dawn unfold, 
And all your sacred fellowship restore; 

When freed from earth, unlimited its powers, 

Mind shall with mind direct communion hold, 

And kindred spirits meet to part no more. 

— Roscoe. 



INDEX 



(References are to pages.) 



Adams, Charles Francis, on Mon- 
taigne and Cicero, 153. 

Adamson, Robert, on Kant, 205. 

"Adamus Exsul," The, by Grotius, 
223. 

Akenside, ode to Anacreon, 34. 

ADDISON, Joseph, on Homer, 21; 
on Virgil, 49; Wieland compared 
with, 216; translation of Ovid, 65; 
on Milton, 245; sketch of, 247; 
characterization of, 248; tribute 
by Macaulay, 249; by Johnson, 
249 ; by Thackeray, 250; compared 
with Montaigne, 248; on Shake- 
speare, 235; Voltaire on, 248; 
praised by Boileau, 248. 

AESCHYLUS, sketch of, 9; at 
battle of Marathon. 9; honored 
by King Hiero. 9; critical opinions 
by Mark Pattison and C. H. 
Moore, 10; conclusion of Macau- 
lay, 11; imitated by Schiller, 198. 

Alighieri (See Dante). 

Agostini, imitated by Ariosto, 98. 

ALFIERI, sketch of, 110; appraised 
by Matthew Arnold, Gioberti and 
Mariotti, 110; his dedication to 
George Washington, 111; com- 
pared with Cowper, 113; Macau- 
lay on, 113; inspired by Plutarch, 
26; his hatred of France, 111. 



Amadis de Gaula, The, 138. 
Andreini, his relation to Milton, 

246. 
Antonio, Nicolas, his eulogy of the 

Argensolas, 135. 

ANACREON, sketch of, 34; Aken- 
side's ode to, 34; Thomas Moore's 
estimate of, 35; Lessing's imita- 
tions of, 200; favorite of Hippar- 
chus and Polycrates, 35; imita- 
tions by Villegas, 136; characteri- 
zation of, 37; Madame Dacier's 
praise of, 37. 

ARGENSOLAS, The, sketch of, 
134; praised by Cervantes, 134; 
by Lope de Vega, 135; estimate 
by Ticknor, 134; by Dieze, 135; 
eulogized by Nicolas Antonio, 
135. 

ARIOSTO, sketch of, 93; his 
Orlando Furioso, 94; Bernardo 
Tasso on, 94; Galileo on, 94; 
Hallam on, 81; compared with 
Homer, Virgil, Dante, Tasso and 
Ovid, 94; his satires, 94; views of 
Tiraboschi, 94; compared with 
Spenser, 239; with Scott, 95; his 
debt to Boiardo, 96; berated by 
Peliegrini and Castelvetro, 98; 
Rose's translation, 96. 

Aristophanes, Moliere compared 
with, 174; attacked Euripides, 
14; Rabelais compared with, 156. 



289 



10 



290 



INDEX 



ARISTOTLE, sketch of, 11; friend 
of Philip of Macedon and tutor 
of Alexander, 11, 12; his Peri- 
patetic school, 12; opinion of 
Hegel, 13; vast scholarship, 13; 
his view of education, 13; praised 
Euripides, 14. 

Arnold, Matthew, on Alfieri, 110; 
on verse translation, 129; on 
Homer, 20; on Herder and Les- 
sing, 219; on Heine, 221; on 
Spenser, 217; on Byron, 257; on 
education, 164; on Wordsworth, 
268. 

Art, definitions of, 99. 

Aurelius (See Marcus Aurelius). 

B. 

Bacon, Francis, on history, 45; his 
erroneous quotation of Plutarch, 
27. 

Balzac, Honore de, on Montaigne, 
153; compared with Dickens, 276 p 
Victor Hugo's oration on, 184. 

Bastile, The, Voltaire's imprison- 
ment in, 177. 

Barros, Joan de, his praise of 
Vicente, 144. 

Berni, Franceso, imitated by Byron, 
in Beppo, 97. 

Bentham, J., on Montesquieu, 164. 

Blair, Dr. Hugh, tribute to Cor- 
neille, 167; on Moliere, 173; opin- 
ion of Lucan, 5 1 ; on Shakespeare, 
236. 

Besant, on Montaigne, 154. 

BOCCACCIO, sketch of, 86; in- 
fluence on French and English 
letters, 87; Decameron, 87; lec- 
tures on Dante, 87; F. M. Warren 



on, 87; contrasted with Petrarch, 
88; La Fontaine compared with, 
175. 
Bodmer, his discovery of Klop- 
stock, 210; Weiland's debt to, 
213. 

BOIARDO, sketch of, 96; his Or- 
lando Inammorato, 97; Hallam's 
view, 96; compared with Ariosto, 
97; burlesqued by Berni, 97; ver- 
sion by Domenichi, 97; Milton's 
familiarity with, 97; shorter 
poems, 98. 

Boileau, on Corneille, 166; friend 
of Racine, 168; of La Fontaine, 
175; compared with Pope, 252; 
his praise of Addison, 248. 

Bolingbroke, Lord, opinion of Livy, 
43. 

Bossuet, his controversy with Fene- 
lon, 160. 

Bonaparte, Napoleon, his admira- 
tion of Goethe, 191. 

Bouterwek, on Lope de Vega, 119; 
on Cervantes, 126; on Camoens, 
130; on Villegas, 137; on the 
Argensolas, 135. 

Boyesen, Prof., estimate of Goethe, 
193; on the friendship of Goethe 
and Schiller, 192; anecdote of 
Goethe, 212. 

British authors, 229. 

Brutus, Horace a follower of, 45; 
Alfieri's tragedy of, 111. 

Buonarroti, Michelangelo (See 
Michelangelo). 

Burke, Edmund, his prose com- 
pared with Milton's, 243. 

BYRON, Lord, his imitation of 
Berni, 97; his reference to Pet- 



INDEX 



291 



rarch, 83; to Dante, 75; his 
praise of Pope, 252, 262; Macau- 
lay's criticism, 257; Matthew 
Arnold, Goethe and Taine on, 
258; Castelar on, 258; Dr. Elze's 
estimate of, 258; Mazzini on, 259; 
his world-wide influence, 260; 
compared with Milton, Homer 
and the Hebrew Scriptures, 261; 
Swinburne, appraisal of, 261; Sir 
Walter Scott's tribute, 262; fond- 
ness for Dante and Tasso, 262; 
sketch of, 256. 

C. 

Caesar, Augustus, friend of Livy, 
43; his exile of Ovid, 54; friend- 
ship for Horace and Virgil, 46. 

CALD2RON, sketch of, 146; Cor- 
neille's debt to, 146; translated 
by Schlegel, 147; compared with 
Lope de Vega, 147; imitated by 
Dryden ; 147. 

CAMOENS, sketch of, 128; his 
Lusiad, 128; opinion of Hallam, 
128; Southey on, 128; his mis- 
cellaneous works, 129; Bouter- 
wek on, 130; his imitations of 
Plautus, 129; his life dramatized 
by Munch-Bellinghausen, 131. 

Campbell, Thomas, on Spenser, 240; 
on Petrarch, 85. 

Capital punishment, Hugo on, 184. 

Corporali, Cesare, his satire imi- 
tated by Cervantes, 124. 

Carey, translation of Dante, 74. 

Carlyle, Thomas, estimate of 
Goethe, 189; translation of 
Goethe. 192; on Kant, 205; 
translation of Richter, 207; opin- 



ion of Richter, 208; on Shake- 
speare, 236; on Cervantes, 122. 
Castelar, on Lord Byron, 258. 

CASTRO, Guillen de, sketch of, 
140; imitated by Calderon, 141; 
his dramatization of The Cid, 
141; adapted by Corneille, 141; 
story of The Cid, 142; critique 
by Ticknor, 143. 

CERVANTES, sketch of, 122; his 
Galatea, 123; his Numancia, 123; 
praised by Schlegel, Shelly, Bout- 
erwek and Goethe, 123; his 
Journey to Parnassus, 124; Don 
Quixote, 124; Heine and Hallam 
on, 125; Sismondi, Bouterwek 
and Landor on, 126; Tick- 
nor quoted 126; compared 
with Rabelais- 127, 158; various 
Cervantes editions, 127; his opin- 
ion of the Amadis de Gaula, 139 
Scott's indebtedness to, 266 
Quevedo compared with, 133 
compared with Ariosto and 
Shakespeare, 125. 

Champmele, Mme. de, Racine's love 
for, 168. 

Chaucer, his familiarity with Ovid, 
65; personally acquainted with 
Petrarch, 81. 

Chesterfield, tribute to Montes- 
quieu, 164. 

Choate, Rufus, his reference to 
Machiavelli, 105; coincides with 
Quintilian, 69. 

Church, Dean, on Dante, 77; on 
Spenser, 238. 

Cicero, compared with Montaigne, 
153. 

Cid, The, 142. 



292 



INDEX 



Coleridge, S. T., praises Carey's 
Dante, 74; on Shakespeare, 236; 
relations with Wordsworth, 267. 

CORNEILLE, sketch of, 165; his 
debt to Castro, 165; to Calderon, 
147; Dowden's opinion of, 165; 
La Harpe, Fontenelle, Scudery 
and Voltaire on, 165; Boileau on, 
166; Moliere's collaboration with, 
166; eulogized by Racine, 166; 
praised by St. Evremont, 166; 
his debt to Lucan, 166-7; Dr. 
Blair's tribute, 167; his advice to 
Racine, 168; opposed by Riche- 
lieu, 165; praised by Faguet, 167. 

Cowley, his debt to Spenser, 239. 

Cowper, compared with Alfieri, 113. 

Criticism, Goethe on, 193; German, 
Lessing the father of, 200; Karnes' 
Elements of, cited, 161; Quinti- 
lian, father of ancient, 67. 



D. 



DANTE, sketch of, 73; political 
career, 73; the Divine Comedy. 
74; Carey's translation, 74; on 
translation, 129; Byron's refer- 
ence to, 75; characterization of, 
75; Di. Garnett quoted, 76; 
opinion of Dean Church, 77; 
Boccaccio's lectures on, 75; 
Macaulay on, 78; Milton com- 
pared with, 78, 244; Byron's fond- 
ness for, 262; Ruskin on, 78; 
Cardinal Manning on, 79 ; Shelley 
on, 79. 

DeQuincey, on Kant, 206; on 
Wordsworth, 268; Life of Richter, 
207. 



DeStael, Madame, her view of 
Goethe, 189; visited Schiller, 198; 
her opinion of Kant, 203. 

DICKENS, Charles, sketch of, 271; 
his portraiture of characters, 
271-2; Thackeray on, 275; com- 
pared with Balzac and Ernst 
Hoffman, 276; Tolstoy's view, 
276; tribute of E. P. Whipple, 
276; his civic reforms, 277-8; 
Foster's biography, 278. 

Dieze, on the Argensolas, 135; on 
Villegas, 136. 

Domenichi, Lodovica, his version 
of Boiardo, 97. 

Dowden, Edward, his praise of 
Corneille, 165. 

Drama, the modern, first produced 
by Vicente, 143. 

Dryden, translation of Ovid, 55; 
copied Plautus, 59; reference to 
Milton, 239; to Shakespeare, 233. 

Duffand, Madame du, her tribute 
to Voltaire, 178; Voltaire's letter 
to on Rabelais, 158. 



Education, Plutarch's views on, 48; 

Quintilian on, 68 ; Aristotle on, 13; 

Fenelon on, 160; Arnold on, 164. 
Einstein, his theory of relativity 

suggested by Kant, 204. 
Elze, Karl, his estimate of Byron, 

258. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, on Mon- 
taigne, 152; on Shakespeare, 234; 

introduced Tennyson to America, 

278. 



INDEX 



293 



English authors, 229. 

Epicurus, friend of Menander, 28; 

Lucretius a disciple of, 57. 
Essay, the modern, fathered by 

Montaigne, 151. 

EURIPIDES, sketch of, 14; com- 
pared with Sophocles, 14; pupil 
of Anaxagoras, 14; attacked by 
Aristophanes and approved by 
Aristotle, 14; anecdote by Plu- 
tarch, 14; influence on modern 
drama, 15; Racine's debt to, 168; 
imitated by Milton, 246; by 
Vondel, 246. 

F. 

Faguet, tribute to Corneille, 167. 
Farmer poet, Virgil the, 49. 
Faust, Goethe's, the history of, 192. 

FENELON, sketch of, 159; his 
controversy with Bossuet, 160; 
on education, 160; Hallam's opin- 
ion, 160; compared with Froebel, 
Pestalozzi, Rousseau and Locke, 
161; his Telemachus, 161; Vol- 
taire on, 161; eulogized La Fon- 
taine, 175; Wieland compared 
with, 216; his love of books, 160; 
his imitation of Fontenelle, 161; 
La Harpe's view of, 161; his 
debt to Lucian, 161. 

Fielding, Henry, Lady Montague's 
observation on, 155; compared 
with Shakespeare, 235. 

Fontenelle, his tribute to Corneille, 
165, 166; imitated by Fenelon, 
161. 

Francis, Sir Philip, view of Horace, 
46. 



Free speech, Lessing's advocacy of, 
201; Milton's struggle for, 243. 

French authors, 149. 

Frere, J. Hookman, translation of 
The Cid, 142. 

Friendship, Horace on, 49. 

Froude, J. A., on Shakespeare, 237; 
on Homer, 20. 



Galileo, on Ariosto, 94; visited by 

Milton, 242. 
Garnett, Dr. Richard, on Dante, 

76. 
Gautier, his appraisal of Heine, 222. 
German authors, 187. 
Gioberti, on Alfieri, 110. 

GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von, 
his praise of Cervantes, 123; 
sketch of, 189; tribute by Carlyle, 
189; compared with Homer, 
Dante and Shakespeare, 189; 
opinions of Taine and Madame 
de Stael, 189; his meeting with 
Herder, 190; translated by Scott, 
191; tribute by Napoleon, 191; 
his golden jubilee, 191; friend- 
ship with Schiller, 191; trans- 
lated by Carlyle, 192; his Faust. 
192; tributes by Bayard Taylor 
and George Henry Lewes, 193; 
by Prof. Boyesen, 193 ; by Taine, 
193; on criticism, 193; his view 
of war, 194; his praise of Richter, 
207; influenced by Klopstock, 
212; by Goldsmith, 190; friendship 
for Herder, 217; visited by Heine, 
222; his praise of Milton, 246; on 
Byron, 258; on Lessing, 202; 
compared with Weber, 225. 



294 



INDEX 



Golden mean, Horace on, 47. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, his influence on 
Goethe, 190; visited Voltaire, 178. 

Gray, Thomas, tribute to Milton, 
246; compared with Horace, 46; 
opinion of Pope's Homer, 253. 

Grimm, Jacob, on the English lan- 
guage, 230. 

Greek authors, 7. 

Grotius, Hugo, compared with 
Machiavelli, 105; his relation to 
Milton, 246. 

Guarini, 39; his Pastor Fido, 108. 

H. 

Hallam, Henry, on Ariosto, 94; on 
Machiavelli, 104; on Petrarch, 
80; on Don Quixote, 125; on 
Camoens, 128; on Montaigne, 
152; on Rabelais, 156; on Ra- 
cine, 169; on Boiardo, 96; 
on Fenelon, 160; on Shakespeare, 
235; on Spenser, 216; on Milton, 
245. 

Hamilton, Alexander, his quotation 
of Montesquieu, 163. 

Hegel, his view of Aristotle, 13. 

HEINE, sketch of, 219; translated 
by Scott, 219; his comparison 
with Don Quixote, 220; his 
opinion of America, 221 ; Matthew 
Arnold on, 221; his visit with 
Goethe, 222; Gautier's appraisal 
of, 222 ; intellectually the child of 
Byron, 258; influenced by Rous- 
seau, 220. 

Henry, Patrick, Byron's praise of, 
260. 

HERDER, J. G., sketch of, 216; as 
bibliophile, 216; friendship with 



Goethe, 216; his translations, 217; 
Matthew Arnold on, 218; in- 
fluence on his contemporaries, 
217; his admiration of Gold- 
smith, 216. 
Hiero, King, patron of Theocritus, 
38; of Pindar, 32; of Aeschylus, 
9. 

HOMER, sketch of, 17; German 
critics of, 17; modern translations, 
17; characterization of, by Prof. 
Blair, 17, 18; Pope's translation, 
18, 253; opinions of Hazlitt, 
Matthew Arnold and J. A. 
Froude, 20; of Addison, 21; com- 
pared with Virgil, Tasso and 
Milton, 21; Pope's comparison 
of with Virgil, 254. 

HORACE, sketch of, 45; befriended 
by Virgil, 45; by Augustus, 46; 
opinion of Philip Francis, 46; 
his love for Virgil and Maecenas, 
48; Montaigne compared with, 
153; Wieland compared with, 216; 
compared with Alcaeus, Sappho 
and Anacreon, 46; his "golden 
mean," 47; Pope compared with, 
252; imitated by Villegas, 137. 

Howitt, W., on Tennyson, 284. 

Holland, Lord, on Lope de Vega, 
119. 

HUGO, Victor, 181; tribute by 
Tennyson, 182; by Lanson, 183; 
contrasted with Diderot and 
Renan, 184; on capital punish- 
ment, 184; orations on Balzac 
and Voltaire, 184; his political 
triumph, 183; C. C. Starkweather 
on, 183; his crayon of John 
Brown, 185. 



INDEX 



295 



Hume, David, his influence on 

Kant, 204; view of Milton, 245. 
Heeren, opinion of Petrarch, 81. 

I. 

"Imitation of Christ," rendered into 
verse by Corneille, 166. 

Irish, the, English tyranny over, 
238, 239. 

Italian authors, 71; Italian civiliza- 
tion, 72. 

J- 

Johnson, Samuel, on Milton, 245; 

on Addison, 249; on Pope, 252. 
Jowett, Prof., on Plato, 25. 
Juvenal, imitated by Quevedo, 132. 



K. 



KANT, sketch of, 203; Madame de 
Stael's opinion of, 203; George 
Henry Lewes on, 203; compared 
with Plato, 204; his "Critique," 
204; suggestion of Einstein's 
theory of relativity, 204; in- 
fluenced by Hume, 204; Robert 
Adamson on, 205; Carlyle on, 
205; Schlegel on, 205; DeQuincey 
quoted, 206; characterization by 
Albert Schwegler, 206; antici- 
pated nebular hypothesis of La- 
Place, 204. 

Kames, Lord, his "Elements of 
Criticism," cited, 161. 

Keats, John, Tennyson compared 
with, 282; tribute to Spenser, 
241; Weber influenced by, 223. 

Keble, his characterization of 
Wordsworth, 271. 



KLOPSTOCK, sketch of, 210; his 
Miltonic character noted by Bod- 
mer, 210; Roscoe's translation of 
his "Messiah," 210; influence on 
Goethe, 212; his place in German 
literature, 212, 213. 



L. 

LA FONTAINE, sketch of, 175; 
eulogized by Fenelon, 175; com- 
pared with Boccaccio, 175; rivals 
Phaedrus, 176; Moliere's friend- 
ship for, 175. 

LaHarpe, eulogy of Racine, 170; on 
Corneille, 165, 166; preferred 
Fenelon to Fontenelle, 161. 

Lamartine, opinion of Tasso, 91 ; 
on Italian civilization, 72. 

Landor, W. S., on Cervantes, 126; 
on Shakespeare, 234. 

LaPlace, his nebular hypothesis 
anticipated by Kant, 204. 

Lavatar, definition of art, 99. 

Law, Hooker's definition of, 190. 

L' Estrange, translation of Quevedo, 
132. 

LESSING, sketch of, 200; his 
imitations of Anacreon, 200; his 
work on criticism, 201; Ma- 
caulay on, 201; Goethe's view, 
202; his fidelity to the Greek 
standards, 202; Matthew Arnold 
on, 219; prepared way for Fichte 
and Kant, 202; advocacy of free 
speech, 201; Milton compared 
with, 243 ; controversy with Pope, 
254; contrasted with Addison, 
249; with Wieland, 215. 



296 



INDEX 



Lewes, George Henry, tribute to 
Goethe, 193; on Kant, 203; 
tribute to Socrates, 22. 

Lieber, Francis, his view of Montes- 
quieu, 163; contrasted with 
Machiavelli, 105. 

LIVY, sketch of, 43; friend of 
Augustus, 43; his History of 
Rome, 43; Bolingbroke's opinion 
of, 43-4; his epitaph, 43; his 
view of history, 44. 

Longfellow, Henry W., his praise 
of Tennyson, 279. 

LOPE DE VEGA, sketch of, 117; 
his Italian imitations, 117; his 
precocious scholarship, 117; his 
lyrics,118; his plays, 119; Bduter- 
wek and Lord Holland on, 119; 
Cervantes on, 120; Ticknor on, 
120; discards Terence and Plau- 
tus, 120; imitated by Moliere, 
121; compared with Shake- 
speare, 232. 

Lowell, James Russell, on Theoc- 
ritus, 40; on Milton, 243; his 
appreciation of Dante, 78. 

LUCAN, sketch of, 51; his Phar- 
salia, 52; was Corneille's model, 
166; Nero's hatred of, 52; nephew 
of Seneca, 52. 

Lucian, followed by Quevedo, Fon- 
tenelle and Fenelon, 161; by 
Rabelais, 156. 

LUCRETIUS, sketch of, 56; his 
De Rerum Natura, 56; compared 
with Milton, 57; poem on, by 
Tennyson, 57. 

Lytton, Lord, on Milton, 246. 



M. 

Macaulay, on Dante, 78; on Machi- 
avelli, 106; on Aeschylus, 11; on 
Alfieri and Cowper, 113; on Don 
Quixote, 125; on Voltaire, 180; 
on Lessing, 2 01 ; on Shake- 
speare, 235; on Spenser, 241; on 
Milton, 243; on Addison, 249; on 
Byron, 257; . on the Spanish 
authors, 116. 

MACHIAVELLI, sketch of, 103; 
Taine on, 103; The Prince, 104; 
Hallam on, 104; contrasted with 
Francis Lieber, 105; miscon- 
strued by Andrew Dickson White, 
105; contrasted with Grotius, 105; 
appraised by Rufus Choate, 105; 
Shakespeare's misconception of, 
106; Macaulay on, 106; founded 
school of philosophical politics, 
106. 

Madison, James, his opinion of 
Montesquieu, 163. 

Maecenas, friendship for Horace, 
46; friend of Virgil, 49; "the 
German Maecenas," 197. 

Maintenon, Madame de, her in- 
fluence with Racine, 169. 

Mansoni, Allesandro, his I Promessa 
Sposi, 88. 

MARCUS AURELIUS, sketch of, 
61; opinion of John Stuart Mill, 
63; his Meditations, 63. 

Martial, his opinion of Quintilian, 
67. 

Marlowe, Christopher, his transla- 
tion of Ovid, 55. 

Matthews, Brander, on Moliere, 
172, 174. 



INDEX 



297 



Mazzini, tribute to Lord Byron, 

259. 
McCarthy, Justin, on Tennyson, 

282. 
Medical quacks, Petrarch on, 84; 

Moliere on, 173. 

MENANDER, sketch of, 28; friend 
of Epicurus, 28; imitated by 
Plautus and Terence, 28, 29; 
German translations of, 29; Addi- 
son compared with, 249; Moliere 
compared with, 174. 

METASTASIO, sketch of, 107. 

MICHELANGELO, sketch of, 99; 
Symonds' characterization of, 99; 
sonnet on Dante, 100; Sidney 
Colvin quoted, 101; sonnet to 
Pistoja, 102; love for Vittoria 
Colotfna, 102; painting by Schnei- 
der, 102 ; compared with Petrarch, 
103. 

Mill, John Stuart, on Marcus 
Aurelius, 63; his appreciation of 
Wordsworth, 270. 

Manning, Cardinal, on Dante, 79. 

Munch-Bellinghausen, his drama of 
Camoens, 131. 

MILTON, John, compared with 
Klopstock, 210, 211; reference to 
Boiardo, 97; indebtedness to 
Spenser, 239; sketch of, 241; 
his great learning, 241; his 
polemics, 243; Macaulay and 
Mark Pattison on, 243; com- 
pared with Lessing, 243; Hallam 
on, 245; compared with Dante, 
244, 78, 79; Addison, Johnson 
and Hume on, 245; relation to 
Grotius, Vondel and Andreini, 
246; Lord Lytton on, 246; imi- 



tated Sophocles and Euripides, 
246; Goethe's tribute, 246; Byron 
compared with, 261; Masson's 
biography, 243; Gray's poetic 
tribute, 246. 

MOLIERE, sketch of, 171; borrows 
from Lope de Vega, 121; Brander 
Matthews on, 172, 174; com- 
pared with Plautus, Terence and 
Aristophanes, 174; Blair on, 173; 
praised by Voltaire, 174; his 
appreciation by La Fontaine, 
175; copied Plautus, 59; com- 
pared with Shakespeare, 232, 
235; his war on hypocrisy, 172; 
collaboration with Corneille, 166; 
inspired by Plutarch, 26. 

Montalvan, on Lope de Vega, 
117, 122. 

MONTALVO, sketch of, 138; his 
Amadis of Gaul, 138; praised by 
Tasso, 138; Italian, English and 
French versions of, 139. 

MONTESQUIEU, sketch of, 162; 
Voltaire's eulogy of, 162; his 
popularity in America, 162, 163; 
his debt to Tacitus, 164; Madi- 
son's opinion of, 163; Francis 
Lieber on, 163; Cheste* field's 
tribute to, 164; compared with 
Tacitus, 162; Jeremy Bentham 
on, 164. 

MONTAIGNE, sketch of, 151; 
Emerson on, 152; Sainte-Beuve 
on, 154; characterization of, 153; 
Shakespeare's debt to, 154; Pas- 
quier on, 154; compared with 
Addison, 154; with Wieland, 216; 
with Horace, 153; with Petrarch, 
151; Besant on, 154. 



298 



INDEX 



N. 

Napoleon, tribute to Goethe, 191. 
Numancia, The, of Cervantes, 123. 

O. 

OVID, sketch of, 53; banished by 
Augustus, 54; his Ars Amatoria 
and Epistolae Ex Ponto, 54; 
his moral instability, 54; his 
Medea and Metamorphoses, 55; 
translation by Dryden, Marlowe, 
Congreve, and Addison, 55; 
Shakespeare's familiarity with, 
55; Chaucer's knowledge of, 56. 

P. 

Palmerston, Lord, his appointment 

of Tennyson as laureate, 283. 
Pastoral poetry, origin and growth 

of, 39. 
Pasquier, Etienne, on Montaigne, 

154. 
Pattison, Mark, on Milton, 243; 

on Aeschylus, 10. 

PETRARCH, sketch of, 80; Latin 
poems of, 80; father of the 
Renaissance, 80, 81; his travels, 
81; early English views of, 81; 
Hallam's estimate, 82; Laura, 83; 
receives laurel crown, 82; com- 
pared with Montaigne, 151; imi- 
tated by Villegas, 137; Campbell's 
estimate of, 85; his controversy 
with medical quacks, 84; Schopen- 
hauer on, 84. 

PLUTARCH, sketch of, 25; his 
Lives, 26; praised by Alfieri, 
Napoleon, Petrarch, Montaigne, 



St. Evermont, Sir John Lubbock 
and Montesquieu, 26; North's 
translation, 26; Shakespeare's 
debt to, 27; Bacon's erroneous 
quotation, 27; his views on edu- 
cation and statesmanship, 27, 
28; his anecdote of Euripides, 
14, 15; of Pindar, 32; a favorite of 
Moliere, 26. 

PINDAR, sketch of, 32; anecdote 
by Plutarch, 32; praised by 
Cicero and Pausanias, 32; opinion 
of Plato, 32; his odes, 32; modern 
translations, 33; compared with 
Horace, 46; imitations by Gray, 
33. 

PLATO, sketch of, 22; pupil of 
Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, 
22; companion of Xenophon, 23; 
his metaphysics, 24; influence 
upon ancient culture, 24; his 
Republic, 25; Kant, compared 
with, 204; his travels, 23; his ex- 
perience with Dionysius, 23; his 
debt toLycurgus, 25; Prof. Jowett 
on, 25. 

PLAUTUS, sketch of, 59; influence 
on English, German and French 
literature, 59; imitated Menander, 
59; surpassed by Moliere, 173. 

Poe, Edgar Allen, "The Poetic 
Principle," 99, 100. 

Political philosophy (see Montes- 
quieu and Machiavelli). 

POPE, Alexander, on Spenser, 239; 
sketch of, 251; Thackeray's esti- 
mate of, 251; Taine on, 251; 
Johnson's praise of, 251, 252, 
253; Byron's admiration of, 252, 



INDEX 



299 



262; compared with Boileau, 
Sappho and Virgil, 252; Leslie 
Stephen's criticism, 253; transla- 
tion of Homer, 253; praised by 
DeQuincey, 252; by Gray, 253; 
friendship with Swift, and satire 
on Addison, 253, 254; contro- 
versies with Voltaire, Lessing and 
Crousaz, 254; his comparison of 
Virgil and Homer, 254. 

Q. 

QUINTILIAN, sketch of, 67; Mar- 
tial's opinion of, 67; his De 
Institutiones Oratoris, 68; be- 
friended by Domitian, 67; his 
views on education, 68; on 
eloquence, 69. 

QUEVEDO, sketch of, 131; his 
Paul the Sharper, and Visions, 
132; translated by L'Estrange, 
132; imitations of Juvenal and 
Persius, 132; compared with 
Cervantes, 133. 

R. 

RABELAIS, sketch of, 155; esti- 
mate of, 156; Wells on, 156; 
compared with Fielding, 155; 
resemblance to Lucan and Aristo- 
phanes, 156; Taine on, 157; 
Voltaire on; 158 ; Sainte-Beuve on, 
158; compared with Cervantes 
and Swift, 156; his last words, 
158. 

RACINE, eulogized Corneille, 166; 
sketch of, 168; his friendship 
with Boileau, Moliere and Fure- 
tiere, 168; Hallam on, 169, 170; 



influenced by Madame de Main- 
tenon, 169; his debt to Euripides, 
169; compared with Virgil, 170; 
Voltaire's opinion of, 170; his 
debt to Mme. de Champmele, 
168. 

Religious hypocrisy, Moliere on, 172. 

Republic, Roman, its' restoration 
favored by Agrippa and opposed 
by Virgil, 50; Plato, his "Re- 
public," 25. 

Revolution, French, Voltaire's re- 
lation to, 180. 

Richelieu, his opposition to Cor- 
neille, 165. 

RICHTER, Jean Paul, sketch of, 
207; his "Levana" praised by 
Goethe, 207; translated by Car- 
lyle, 207; Carlyle's estimate of, 
208; compared with Carlyle, 
209; DeQuincey 's life of, 207; 
Lady Chatterton's excerpts, 207; 
on authorship, 208; his sobriquet 
of "Der Einzige," 208. 

Rogers, Samuel, his recommenda- 
tion of Tennyson for poet lau- 
reate, 283. 

Roman authors, 41. 

Roscoe, translation of Klopstock's 
"Messiah," 210. 

Rothensteiner, Rev. John, his trans- 
lation from Weber, 225. 

Rousseau, influence on Schiller, 
196; on Heine, 220; anticipated 
by Fenelon, 160. 

S. 

Saint John, Klopstock's tribute to, 

211. 
Sainte-Beuve, on Montaigne, 154; 



300 



INDEX 



on Rabelais, 158; Victor Hugo's 

unkindness toward, 184. 
Saintsbury, on Wordsworth, 269; 

on French literature, 150; in 

Montaigne, 155. 
Sappho, Pope compared with, 252. 

SALLUST, sketch of, 64; Epistles 
to Caesar, Jugurthine War, Con- 
spiracy of Catiline, 64, 65 ; hated 
by Cicero and Livy, 65; Dr. 
Stewart's critique, 65; compared 
with Thucydides, 64. 

SCHILLER, friendship with 
Goethe, 192; sketch of, 195; 
influenced by Rousseau, 196; 
his historical work, 197; literary 
association with Goethe, 198; 
Goethe's tribute to "Wallen- 
stein," 198; visited by Madame de 
Stael, 198 ; his triumph at Berlin, 
198; his imitation of Aeschylus 
and Sophocles, 198; admitted to 
French citizenship, 197; com- 
pared with Voltaire, 197. 

Schlegel, on Kant, 205; translation 
of Shakespeare, 215; of Calderon, 
147. 

Schwegler, Albert, estimate of Kant, 
206. 

SCOTT, Sir Walter, sketch of, 262; 
his Goethe translation, 263 ; trans- 
lation of Heine, 219; tribute to 
Byron 262; his translations from 
the German, 263; his obligation 
to Cervantes, 266; fourider of the 
historical novel, 262; success of 
his novels, 266; his advice to 
Lockhart, 266. 

Seneca, Corneille's debt to, 165; 



read by Montaigne, 151; uncle 
of Lucan, 52. 

SHAKESPEARE, William, trans- 
lation by Wieland, 214; by 
Schlegel, 215, 147; his debt to 
Ovid, 55; his debt to Plutarch, 
26, 27; his plagiarism of Mon- 
taigne, 154; his injustice to 
Machiavelli, 106; sketch of, 231; 
compared with Lope de Vega, 
232; his want of scholarship, 
233; compared with Moliere and 
Goethe, 232; secret of his power, 
232 ; Hudson's view, 233 ; Emerson 
and Landor on, 234; his char- 
acters, 234-5; Macaulay quoted, 
235; Hallam on, 235; views of 
Coleridge, Carlyle and Blair, 
236; Taine on, 236; Addison on 
the occult in Shakespeare, 235; 
Froude on, 237. 

Shelley, P. B., on Dante, 79. 

Southey, on Camoens, 128. 

Socrates, teacher of Plato, 22; 
Xenophon's tribute to 23 ; praised 
by Lewes, 22. 

Slavery, Hugo on, 185. 

Sophocles, imitated by Voltaire, 
177; by Schiller, 198; by Milton, 
246. 

Soubrette, the, created by Cor- 
neille, 165. 

Spanish authors, 115. 

SPENSER, Edmund, sketch of, 
237; his service in Ireland, 238; 
Dean Church's biography quoted, 
238; literary style, 239; com- 
pared with Ariosto, 239; Hal- 
lam's opinion, 239; Cowley's 
debt to, 239; Milton's acknowl- 



INDEX 



301 



edgment, 239; Alexander Pope 
on, 239; Dryden's opinion, 238; 
Keats on, 241; Matthew Arnold 
on, 239; Campbell quoted, 240; 
Macaulay's criticism, 241; re- 
sembled by Tennyson, 279. 

Stedman, E. C, on Tennyson, 282. 

Stephen, Leslie, on Alexander Pope, 
253. 

St. Evremont, his praise of Cor- 
neille, 166; opinion of Plutarch, 
26. 

St. Francis of Assisi, Wordsworth 
compared with, 268; Dante com- 
pared with, 79. 

Surrey, Earl of, "the English 
Petrarch," 82. 

Swift, Jonathan, friend of Pope, 
253; compared with Rabelais, 157. 

Swinburne, his tribute to Byron, 
261. 



Taine, H. A., estimate of Goethe, 
189, 193; on Machiavelli, 103; 
comparison of Ravelais and Swift, 
157; on Shakespeare, 236; on 
Pope, 251; on Byron, 258; on 
Tennyson, 279; on German cul- 
ture, 188. 

TASSO, Torquato, sketch of, 88; 
his Rinaldo, 89; Aminta, 89; 
Gerusalemme Liberata, 90; com- 
pared with Homer and Virgil, 90; 
Voltaire's opinion, 90; estimates 
by Lamartine and Corniani, 91; 
his insanity, 91; Goethe's drama, 
92; his Gerusalemme Conquis- 
tata, 93; compared with Ariosto, 
95; aided by Pope Sixtus V., 92; 
Byron's admiration of, 262. 



Taylor, Bayard, tribute to Goethe, 
193; on Tennyson, 282. 

TENNYSON, Alfred, sketch of, 
278; Weber's translation of, 223; 
poem on Lucretius, 57; intro- 
duced to America by Emerson, 
278; Longfellow's appreciation, 
279; resemblance to Spenser, 
279; Taine on, 279, 280; com- 
pared with Byron, Pope, Words- 
worth and Keats, 282 ; McCarthy 
on, 282; Stedman, quoted, 282; 
Whipple on, 282; Bayard Taylor 
on, 282; Lord Palmerston's ignor- 
ance of, 283; W. Howitt on, 284; 
his debt to Theocritus, 39; suc- 
ceeded Wordsworth as laureate, 
283. 

Thackeray, W. M., on Addison, 
250; estimate of Pope, 251; on 
Dickens, 275. 

THEOCRITUS, sketch of, 38; Prof. 
Blair's estimate, 39; father of 
pastoral poetry, 38, 39; Lowell's 
reference to, 40. 

Ticknor, on the Argensolas, 134, 
135; on Villegas, 137; his estimate 
of The Cid, 143; his opinion of 
Vincente, 144; critique of Castro, 
143; on Cervantes, 126; on Lope 
de Vega, 120. 

Tiraboschi, on Ariosto, 94, 95. 

Tolstoy, his comparison of Dickens 
and Balzac, 276. 



U. 



Urfe, Honore de, his "Astree," 39. 
Ulrici, on "Dogberry," 234. 



302 



INDEX 



V. 

Vega (See Lope de Vega). 

VICENTE, sketch of, 143; father 
of modern drama, 143; views of 
Ticknor and Barros, 144. 

VILLEGAS, sketch of, 136; the 
Spanish Anacreon, 136; opinion 
of Bouterwek, 137; his imitations 
of Anacreon, Horace, Catullus 
and Petrarch, 137; Ticknor on, 
137; Dieze on, 136; attacked 
Cervantes, Quevedo and Lope de 
Vega, 136. 

VIRGIL, sketch of, 48; aided by 
Maecenas, 49; Georgics, Addi- 
son's opinion of, 49; his Aeneid, 
50; fame of, 51; his friendship for 
Horace, 48; a disciple of Theocri- 
tus, 39; Pope's comparison of, 
with Homer, 254; Petrarch's 
familiarity with, 51. 

VOLTAIRE, eulogy of Montes- 
quieu, 162; on Corneille, 165; on 
Racine, 170; imitated Sophocles, 
177; residence in England, 177; 
in Germany, 178; visited by 
Goldsmith, 178; his French tri- 
umph, 179; Macaulay on, 180; 
estimate of his literary work, 180, 
his incarceration in the Bastile, 
177; his financial successes, 178; 
Benjamin Franklin and, 179; com- 
pared with R. G. Ingersoll, 180; 
relation to the French revolution, 
180; controversy with Alexander 
Pope, 254; his anathema against 
Shakespeare, 259; Mme. du Duf- 
fand's tribute to, 178; praise of 
Addison, 248. 

Vondel, Joost Van den, his relation 
to Milton, 246. 



W. 

War, Goethe's view of, 194. 

Washington, George, Byron's rever- 
ence of, 260; Alfieri's tribute to, 
111. 

WEBER, F. W., his translation of 
Tennyson, 223; sketch of, 223; his 
"Dreizehnlinden," 223, 224; com- 
pared with Wordsworth and 
Goethe, 225; RotheTisteiner's 
translation, 225. 

Whipple, E. P., his critique on 
Dickeris, 276; on Tennyson, 282. 

White, A. D., his comparison of 
Grotius and Machiavelli, 105. 

WIELAND, sketch of, 213; his 
debt to Bodmer, 213; compared 
with Addison, 215, 216; transla- 
tions of Shakespeare, 214; com- 
pared with Fenelon, Virgil, Cicero 
and Horace, 216; his translations 
of Greek and Roman classics, 
214; resembles Montaigne, 216; 
contrasted with Lessirig, 214. 

WORDSWORTH, sketch of, 266; 
his intimacy with Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge, 267 ; succeeded Southey 
as laureate, 267; his love of 
nature, 267; compared with St. 
Francis of Assisi, 267; tribute by 
DeQuincey, 268; Matthew Ar- 
nold's extravagant estimate, 268; 
Saintsbury's view, 269; John 
Stuart Mill's view of, 270; 
Keble's characterization, 271 ; By- 
ron's dislike of, 262; Weber 
compared with, 225. 

X. 

Xenophon, pupil of Socreates, and 
companion of Plato, 23. 



Little Journeys to Parnassus 



The following are excerpts from the opinions of literary critics on the 
first edition of this work: 

An artistic cameo. — Salt Lake City (Utah) Tribune. 

A little treasure. — Kansas City Star. 

A valuable little volume. — Boston (Mass.) Globe. 

Surprisingly interesting. — Indianapolis (Ind.) Star. 

Satisfying, accurate and complete. — St. Louis (Mo.) Star. 

They are splendidly written. — Butte (Mont.) Miner. 

All done with superb literary taste and touch. — St. Louis Times. 

A really helpful guide. — Hartford (Conn. ) Courant. 

Is of value as a volume of reference. — St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

Of great practical value to both teachers and students. — Missouri 
School Journal. 

Critical estimates of the noted authors of seven great literatures of 
the world. — Indianapolis (Ind.) News. 

They open the way to thought. * * * Should be immensely popular 
with all serious readers. — Houston (Tex.) Post. 

Valuable as an incentive for supplemental reading, as a work of 
reference, and as an aid to students and literary workers. — Oakland 
(Calif.) Tribune. 

It is well known that such a work is badly needed by orators, literary 
clubs, libraries, school reading circles, etc. The author has made a true 
portrayal of each character, however brief the sketch. — Atlanta (Ga.) 
Constitution. 

A compact and readable handbook intended for the business man 
who has to take his culture in homeopathic doses. — Montreal (Canada) 
Star. 

This book is an admirable educative one, and the procfuct of much 
learning, research and industry.— Portland (Ore.) Oregonian. 

Mr. Mosby writes in attractive style and reveals sound judgment and 
a critical discrimination. It is a work of peculiar value and unusual 
interest. — Cincinnati (Ohio) Times-Star. 

Seventy sketches which, while brief, contain those essential points 
which give a correct insight to the student of literature. — Los Angeles 
(Calif.) Express. 

The work is designed to give some acquaintance with the great minds 
of the past to the general reader too busy for a more extensive study. — 
Detroit (Mich.) News. 

It has the great advantage of supplying * * * limited but authori- 
tative knowledge of the great literary artists of the ages. — Harrisburg 
(Pa.) Patriot. 



It is a fine piece of work here given us. The style is that of a clas- 
sicist and a scholar. Boston itself cannot offer a more cultural piece of 
work. — Louisville (Ky.) Times. 

Of great value to the reader whose opportunities have not made it 
possible for him to become acquainted with classical literature by study 
of texts. — Davenport (Iowa) Times. 

One who wishes to glimpse the mountain tops of the world's great 
literatures will find a great aid in "Little Journeys to Parnassus," by 
Thomas Speed Mosby. — Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. 

It is like studying a particularly colorful relief map. From Livy, 
the gentle cynic, to melancholy Tennyson, the richest moments of the 
great ones have been retrieved, polished and set like gems in the fine 
fabric of Mosby 's writing. — Kansas City (Mo.) Journal. 

A careful reading of Mr. Mosby 's work cannot fail to inspire a desire 
for further acquaintance with the master minds of the ages. * * * As 
a textbook and manual for literary workers, the book has special value. — 
Trenton (N. J.) Times-Advertiser. 

To the lover of literature, it is a valuable volume, and a stepping 
stone to the live^ and works of the old masters and the new, yet written 
so interestingly that but little effort is required to grasp the lesson Mr. 
Mosby so ably sets forth. — Pittsburg (Pa.) Press. 

No one but a true lover of literature could so interpret these master 
spirits in such entertaining manner. For its size it contains more of value 
than any little book which has appeared for some time. — Salt Lake City 
(Utah) Telegram. 

Literary essays introducing to the ordinary American the wise and 
great of all ages. Mr. Mosby is content to labor that the voices of the 
wise men of old may not be altogether lost in the thundering of armaments 
and the grinding of great wheels. — Wichita (Kan. ) Eagle. 

He has opened a broad and easily traversed road to the everlasting 
abiding pace of the gods of world literature, and he surveys with extensive 
view their works as these have been vouchsafed to mortals of the present 
day. Mr. Mosby's book may be unreservedly commended. In this post 
utilitarian day, it is a work of prime utility. — St. Louis (Mo.) Globe- 
Democrat. 

Compact, concise, valuable as a reference book in any home library 
or to the student or literary worker, the author has compiled and arranged 
in this volume, under an especially noteworthy index, a fund of valuable 
material. As a handbook for reading, the volume is to be recommended 
not only to the student, but for the general reader who seeks information 
regarding the great names in the world of literature. — Pasadena (Calif.) 
Star-News. 



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